Into Tibet: The CIA's first atomic spy and his secret expedition to Lhasa 0802117147

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Citation preview

I

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Sooth China Sea

INTO TIBET T H E C I A ' S F I R S TA T O M I C SPY A N D H I S SECRET EXPEDITION TO L H A S A

THOMAS LAIRD

GROVEP R E S S

N E W YORK

[:ol)yright 0 2002 by T h o m a s Laird All rights reserved. N o part of this book may bc reprotlucetl in any form o r by any electronic or mech;~nic;~l means, including information storilge a n d retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, w h o may quote brief passages in a review. Any m e ~ n b e r sof educational institutions wishing t o photocopy part or all of the work for classroo~nuse, or publishers w h o would like to obtain per~nissionto include the work in a n anthology, should sentl their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, N e w York, N Y 10003.

Publt~.hed.iimultuneoujly in Cunudu P~.intedin the United Stutej

of A m e 1 . i ~ ~

FIRST L;.I)ITI( IN

Library of Clongress Clataloging-in-Publication Data I,aird, Thomas. Into Tibet : T h e CIA'S first atomic spy ant1 his secret expetlition to 1,hasa / b y Thomas Laird. p. c m .

ISBN 0-8021-1714-7 1. United States-Relations-China-Tibet.

2. Tibet ((lhina)-Kclations-Unitcd

St:~tcs. 3. Espionage, Americi~n-(:him-Tibet. Lhasa.

I. Title: America's secret exl>edition to

11. Title.

E l 83.8.1-55 L35 2002 303.48'273051 5-dc2

1

Grove P r n s H4 I Brn;~tIw:~y N c w York, N Y 10003

TO J A N N F E N N E R

AND M Y PARENTS,

LOIS WILSON AND TOMMY LAIRD

CONTENTS

Author's Note xi ... Preface xi11

PART ONE

W H Y THEY WENT

1

.Shegar-Hunglung, Tibet, April 29,1950 3 .An Atomic Monopoly, An Atomic Peace, 1945 to 1949 8 .Strategic Services Unit, H Q , Peking, March 5, 1946 10 .U.S. Embassy, Nanking, March 1946 18 .Alphabet Soup, 1946-1947 22 .The American Consulate, Tihwa, March 25, 1946 23 *Murray Hill, 1943-1g50 24 .Kokto@i, ETR, May 15,1946 25 .At the Chingil River Ford, April 10,1947 27 .The White House and the Potala, March 1947 29 *Osman Bator, Douglas Mackiernan, and Uranium, May and June 1947 30 mPegge Lyons and Douglas Mackiernan, Tihwa, Sinkiang, July and August 1947 35 .CIA Headquarters, Washington, D.C., July 1947 41

CONTENTS

.The AEC and AFSWP, July 1947 43 ePegge and Doug, Shanghai and Tihwa, September 1947 44 .The U.S. Army Advisory Group H Q , Nanking, China, September 25, I 947 46 .Shanghai to Peking, September 25-29, 1947 47 eUSS Preiident Polk, off the China Coast, October 4, 1947 49 eBessac's Cover, Peking, China, October 15, 1947 51 *The Crag Hotel, Penang, Malaysia, October 21, 1947 53 .Frank Bessac and Prince De, Peking, China, October 1947 55 .The Green Lantern, January to August 1948 57 .Douglas Mackiernan and Atomic Explosions, 1948 to March 10, 1949 69 .Department of State, Washington D.C., April 19, 1949 74 .The Raid on the U-2 Mine, Sinkiang and the ETR, April or May 1949 76 .Hawaii, June I, 1996 78 .The Russian Atomic Test Site, Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan, August 29, 1949 81

PART TWO

THE JOURNEY TO TIBET

91

.Tibet, Summer of 1949 93 eDingyuanying, Inner Mongolia, August 1949 97 *Hami to Tihwa, Sinkiang, September 9,1949 103 mTihwa-Urumchi, the People's Republic ofChina, September 26, 1949 107 .Leaving Tihwa, September 27,1949 I 12 .Lake Barkol, with the Kazak Horde of Osman Bator, October 29, 1949 115 .The White House, October 31,1949 120 *Fairfax, California, November 1949 121 *Around the Taklamakan Desert, October 30-November 29, 1949 124 .Washington, D.C., November and December 1949 127 .The Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Dharamsala, India, December I , 1994 131

CONTENTS

@I>eanAcheson, January I 2, I 950 I 32 @Shanghai,the I'eople's Republic of (Ihina, January 30, 1950 I 34 @Fairfax,California, January jo and j 1, I 950 135 @Pekingand Washington, I).(:.,January 20, I 950 140 @SenatorMcCarthy's Speech, Wheeling, West Virginia, February 9, 1950 142 @AchesonMeets Lowell Thomas, February I 7, r cjgo I 44 @Winterat Timurlik, November 29,1949, to March 20, 1950 145 @ ALetter to Tibet, State-CIA Relations, March 30, 1950 153 @McCarthyand Lattimore, Washington, D.C., April 1950 I 56 @Acrossthe Changthang, March and April 1950 158 *Morning, April 29, I 950 r 69 ashegar-Hunglung, Tibet, April 29, I 950 171 *When They Heard Mackiernan Was Dead 177

PART THREE

THROUGH TIBET A N D HOME A G A I N

181

*Nomads and Grenades, April 30 and May I , I 950 I 83 *The Arrow Letter, Tibet, May I, 1950 185 @ T h eU.S. Embassy, New Delhi, India, May 2, 1950 187 mShentsa Dzong, Tibet, May 6, I 950 I 88 @ShentsaDzong, Tibet, May I I , 1950 191 @Tripto Lhasa, May and June 1950 193 @Tibet,Taiwan, and China, Spring 1950 197 *Lhasa, Tibet, June I I , 1950 199 @Mr.Latrash's Lhasa "Assets," Calcutta and Lhasa, Winter and Spring 1949-1950 206 @ T h eFourteenth Dalai Lama, "A U.S. Agent Passing Through Lhasa," December I , I 994 209 @Fairfax,California, June r I , I 950 21 1 @Meetingthe Dalai Lama, Lhasa, Tibet, June I 950 2 I 2 @Dinnerat Tride Lingka, Lhasa, Tibet, June I 5,1950 215 @ T h eTibetan Foreign Bureau, Lhasa. Tibet, June 16.1950 219 @CarvingCrosses, Lhasa, Tibet, July 30,1950 227 @ T h eFlogging, Lhasa, Tibet, July 1950 229

CONTENTS

.The Potala, Lhasa, Tibet, July 1950 230 .Last Days in Lhasa, Late July 1950 233 aMackiernan's Death Announced, July 29,1950 238 .Minister Shakabpa Visits the U.S. Consulate, Calcutta, India, August 4, 1950 241 .The Earthquake, August 15,1950 242 .Latrash and Bessac, Calcutta, India, August 29, 1950 244 .The U.S. Embassy, New Delhi, India, August 30-September 22, 1950 246 .Calcutta, India, September 15,1950 247 .Mrs. Douglas Mackiernan Goes to Washington, October 4, 1950 248 mBessac in Washington, D.C., October 1950 249 .The State Department, Washington, D.C., October 18, 1950 252 aBethesda, Maryland, and Drukha Monastery, October 19, 1950 255 .Washington, D.C., October 27and 28, 1950 260 mPegge and John, First Meeting, Washington, D.C., November 8, 1950 261 .Lfe Magazine, November 13, 1950 262 .Pegge and John, Washington, D.C., November 24,1950 263 .Tibet, Winter 1950-1951 264 .Winter of the Cold War,Washington, D.C., 1950-1951 270 aTihwa, Xinjiang, the People's Republic of China, April 29, I 951 273 .Epilogue: Zvansov, Bessac, Mackiernan, and Tibet 274 Notes 289 Bibliography 335 Acknowledgments 345 Index 351

AUTHOR'S NOTE

of research, I tracked down thousands of pages of U.S. government documents, dozens of letters, two diaries, and the survivors of these events. Several of the government documents quoted in this story were obtained only through Freedom of Information Act requests that took several years to bear fruit. Every assertion of fact in this book is based on these documents, published sources, or interviews with specialists, eyewitnesses, and the survi\lors of the journey. When you see a conversation in quotation marks in this book, they indicate that a person who was at that location at that time recalls those words being said. O r the quotations were recorded in writing at the time or shortly afterward. T h e tense of these quotations has sometimes been altered to fit them into the narrative. If conversations are not in quotes, it indicates that after exhaustive research I believe that this is what was said. Occasionally, recalling events of fifty years ago, survivors' recollections fail, or are at odds with others' memories; when this is so I indicate that in the source notes and tell you what happened to the best of my understanding. Descriptions of places and weather and clothes are based on testimony from the survivors, published accounts. and my own experiences in Tibet. DURING S I X YEARS

AUTHOR'S

NOTE

I have given myself more leeway with descriptive passages. I have occasionally conflated events or conversations, which did occur, into one time and place; these few instances are also noted in the source notes. A few names have been changed, but only for minor chamcters. For the ease of the average reader I have chosen to use the standard spellings for place and people names that were current in America at the time when the events in this book took place. T h u s today's Xinjiang is Sinkiang, Xian is Sian, Beijing is Peking, and Osman Batur is Osman Bator. It is important that the reader understand that when I believe there is doubt about what happened, or what was said, I alert you to that doubt-if not in the text, then in the source notes. For fifty years great pains were taken, and even now continue to be taken, to conceal what truly happened before, during, and after this expedition.

PREFACE

the story of a secret American expedition to Tibet in 1949 and 1950 that has never before been told. Only two of the five men who set out survived. Theirs was a two-thousand-mile, one-year trek, and it is one of the most remarkable adventure stories of the twentieth century. T h e two survivors are the only Americans alive today who have walked across Tibet. However, their story is more than just an adventure tale. T h e survivors are the last Americans ever to meet the Dalai Lama in independent Tibet. China invaded Tibet six weeks after they left the country. Yet today these men and their journey are not part of history. T h e primary purpose of this book is to tell as much about their remarkable iourney as we are allowed to know. T h e facts remained hidden behind a cover story for fifty years. T h e moment I stumbled upon the first hints of this adventure in the dusty files of the National Archives in Washington, D.C., I felt great sympathy with the men who had trekked through the Himalayas half a century ago. Although I am an American, at forty-eight I have spent more of iny life in the Himalayas than in the United States. I first arrived in Nepal in 1972, a nineteen-year-old kid, traveling alone overland from Europe. I have been based in Nepal since. and have INTO TIBET T E L L S

PREFACE

made more than fifty treks in the Himalayas. In 1991 I became the Asiatweek reporter for Nepal. For much of 1991 and 1992I lived in Mustang, a remote Buddhist barony within Nepal that juts u p through the Himalayas onto the Tibetan Plateau. T h e people, their culture, and their language are essentially Tibetan, though Nepal has ruled the area since about 1770. T h e feudal serfs of Mustang were liberated from their noble masters only in 1956. Incredible fourteenth-century Tibetan Buddhist murals have survived in Mustang, while the Chinese have destroyed 90 percent of such art in Tibet. Mustang became a time capsule of preinvasion Tibet-made more alluring by the fact that it was a forbidden land. T h e Nepalese government forbade foreigners to visit Mustang during the thirty years before my one-year permit was issued. Nepal and China had not forgotten the covert Central Intelligence Agency support for a Tibetan guerrilla movement based in Mustang after the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950. When the United States halted support to the Tibetans in the rg70s, China and Nepal agreed to disarm the guerrillas. Nepalese sensitivities to this Cold W a r history-and, some said, Chinese pressure-kept Mustang closed to all non-Nepalese during the 1970s and 1980s even as tourism became Nepal's major industry. Mustang became the most coveted travel destination in Nepal. In 1990 Nepal erupted into revolution. My photography of violent clashes in front of the Royal Palace in Kathmandu was published in many international news magazines. T h e new government that came to power felt I had risked my life getting pictures out to the world. T h e new prime minister asked me if there was something I wanted in Nepal, after having lived there for twenty years. I said 1 wanted to go to Mustang. So in 1991 the government issued me the first (and only) one-year travel permit for Mustang. I spent most of my time there shooting 50,000 photographs, working on a book that Peter Matthiessen and I eventually published, titled East of Lo Monthang:

In the Land of Mustang. At the end of my year in Mustang 1 was eager to fly to the National Archives in Washington, D.C. A number of searing experiences drove me there. Weapons air-dropped into Mustang by the C I A have never been properly removed from the area. While I was there two teenagers

PREFACE

each had blown off a hand with an old (3A-supplie(l grcnaclc. l'hcy found a grenade abandoned beside a trail and tried to hre:ik it open, Another young man was killed in 1c)c)gin a simi1;ir incidcnt. Secing the mangled bodies of the chiltlren of Mustang made America'\ hidden history plain: it saddened and angered me. I spoke with an old Tibetan guerrilla aftrr I came out of Mustang. During one of his raids from Mustang into Tibct, hc had acquired intelligence that gave the CIA six months' advancr warning of (:him's first atomic test explosion. When I met him, he was ill, without fnmily, living on charity from other Tibetans. C I A sources say that his atomic intelligence was, dollar for dollar, some of the most valuable intelligence of the entire Cold War. This hero remains unknown, though his eyes still shine with affection for his CIA trainers and love for American ideals. T h e maimed boys and the abandoned intelligence hero became symbols to me. Back in the 1960s C I A operatives assured the Tibetan guerrillas that the United States wanted to help the Tibetans drive the Chinese out of Tibet. In fact the guerrillas served U.S. interests, not Tibetan ones. T h a t was made obvious when the United States abruptly established diplomatic relations with China in the 1970s. Covert support to the Tibetans was cut off the next day. Hundreds of guerrillas died as a result of that U.S. abandonment. T h e weapons of that secret war were left in Mustang to kill innocent children. Its heroes were left without pensions. All of this was collateral damage of American actions, which America now denies ever happened. This cynical manipulation of people and history cnraged me. T h e fate of the maimed boys in Mustang was before me as I entered the National Archives in 1994 looking for declassified records about the CIA'S involvement in Mustang during the 1960s. I discovered in two hours that this U.S. history is still hidden-nearly all the government documents remained classified T( )r, SECRET. Yet during those same two hours I committed myself to an exploration that would ultimately last six years. Instead of information about Tibetan guerrillas in Mustang, I found scattered declassified State Department documents about a \vice consul named Douglas Mackiernan, Fulbright scholar Frank Bessac, White Russian refugee Vasili Zvansov, and their trip to Tibet in 1949

PREFACE

and 1950. T h e story of the Mackiernan party gripped m e at once. Although most of the State Department documents about it were classified, and the C I A had released none of its documents, from the first rnolnent I started reading the crinkling onion-skin letters, sent to the United States from China and India fifty years earlier, I was hooked. I copied a few hundred pages of documents and flew home. By 1994 the computer revolution was starting to hit Kathmandu. One day, I ran Bessac's name through a C D - R O M that had every telephone listing in the United States. O n my third call from Kathmandu, I suddenly found myself talking to Frank Bessac-ex-CIA as well as Fulbright-in the United States. I was surprised when he told me that he had written about his experience for Llfe magazine in 1950. He warned me cryptically, "Henry Luce turned it into a Cold W a r yarn." My mother-in-law, back in Los Angeles, had the magazine with Bessac's story in my hands within weeks. I audiotaped, and videotaped, dozens of hours of interviews with Bessac and then transcribed them. I eventually found seven surviving participants. Each document and each person led me to more people and more documents. I traveled from New Jersey to Dharamsala, India, to interview people. T h e story still eluded me. After five years of work, I discovered that the survivors did not understand the whole story. At the last moment, a previously unknown diary turned up. It took years for the story, as I now understand it, to take shape in my mind. It is not the same story that' L published in 1950. Nor is this just the story that the survivors themselves recall. Despite six years of work, there remain many mysteries here. T h e Dalai Lama worried aloud to me when 1 interviewed him for this book. H e wondered if revealing the covert American presence in Tibet in 1950 would give the Chinese some excuse for their invasion. After all, when China invaded Tibet in 1950 it said that its motivating reason was to halt the imperialist plots of American agents in Tibet. At the time, America denied that there were any American agents in Tibet prior to the invasion. Until now that denial has stood unchallenged. This book proves, for the first time, not only that there were Americans in Tibet, but that several agents, in and out of Tibet, worked actively to send military aid to the Tibetans

PREFACE

prior to the Chinese invasion. I t proves that the highest Icvcls of thc U.S. government were involvetl in that planning--rIcspitc govcrnmcnt denials ever since. Tibetans were led to hlicvc that the Unitccl States would help them ifChina invaded. This book shows, for the first tirne, why Tibetans felt betrayed by America after the (:hinese invasionand how American actions may have hastened thc (:hinesc inva\ion of Tibet-tragically even while Americans on the ground tried to help the country. There are many reasons why the C I A documents, which would reveal every detail about the story that is told here, remain secret cven now, fifty years later. T h e Dalai Lama's concern may be one of them. In addition, the United States prefers to blame China alone for the invasion, rather than to dilute Chinese guilt with any hint of U.S. involvement. But one reason stands out from all others. I believe that the C I A realizes it indirectly involved Tibet in the one of America's first atomic intelligence operations led by Douglas Mackiernan back in 1950, at the birth of the Cold War, an operation that benefited the United States but that may have helped destroy Tibet. Nothing about American atomic intelligence operations in foreign countries has ever been declassified by the CIA. This may be the primary reason why this Tibetan chapter of U.S. history has remained hidden. It is not covert U.S. operations in Tibet that are being hidden, but the U.S. atomic secrets to which they are linked. And yet while the C I A operations revealed here were intended to be covert, at the time of these events the Chinese knew almost everything you are about to read. T h e failure to keep these operations secret may have helped precipitate the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950-though precipitating the invasion of Tibet was the opposite of America's avowed intentions. T h e C I A seems to be hiding its own tragic mistakes behind the veil of national security . Every CIA director, since 1950, as well as current director George Tenet, has known that these secret operations claimed the lik of the first C I A undercover agent ever killed in the line of duty. H e is honored by the CIA for his contributions and sacrifice. But the agency may not yet know precisely why that man died. Certainly, it has not linked his death to McCarthyism. A current employee of the CIA says that the administrators of the C I A believe that discussing the covert

PREFACE

operation, in which that first agent died, would disrupt modern SinoU.S. relations. Another C I A employee has written a letter that states there are practical national security reasons why the story behind his death cannot be revealed to the public. In the C I A foyer, near the wall where the C I A honors agents who have died in service to the United States, a line from Christian scripture is inscribed: "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." I agree with these sentiments entirely, though now, more than ever, I a m unsure if anyone ever knows the full truth, certainly with regard to these events. Despite all that, readers will want to know if this is a true story. Many facts and many chapters of history are condensed and brought to life in this book, but much is also left out. I have not tried to write an academic history of Tibet. Rather, my aim is to penetrate to the furious, chaotic heart of Tibet's fight for freedom at the moment when that freedom was lost. I try to reveal the essence of what happened, not through a recitation of every fact but by an understanding of what the Americans who lived through these events did and felt, and what motivated them. My final answer is still the same: Yes, this is a true a story.

-Thomas

Laird

Washington, D.C.; Coral Gables, Florida; New Haven, Connecticut; Hackettstown, New Jersey; Missoula, Montana; Kona, Hawaii; Boston, Massachusetts; New York City; Man hattan Beach, Albany, Berkeley, Santa Rosa, and Palo Alto, Calfornia; Gauhati, New Delhi, and Dharamsala, India; Lhasa, Tibet; Kathmandu, Nepal August z 994-Novem ber zoo I

P A R T ONE

I

W H Y THEY WENT

"The only new thing in the world ij the histot y you don 't know. -PRESIDENT

I !J

kJ:ZRHJ' S. TI' tuxedos. W h o said that? W h o was that lying in front of him, in such an odd and uncomfortable position, lying so still?

THOMAS L A I R D

AN ATOMIC MONOPOLY, AN ATOMIC PEACE PRELUDE TO C O L D W A R 1945 TO 1949

T h e Americans who walked into Tibet-and the resulting fatal shoot-out on the Tibetan border in 1950-took the first steps of that journey by traveling to China during World W a r 11, and by surviving the war. Neither Frank Bessac nor Douglas Mackiernan went to China as an average soldier. Both men worked with the Office of Strategic Services, in their own different ways. T h e OSS was disbanded at war's end, broken into different pieces. Many of these fragments were eventually reforged into America's first peacetime intelligence outfit: the Central Intelligence Agency. Both men began their time in China as, in common parlance, spies. In 1945 atomic intelligence was the crown jewel of the American intelligence community. T h e astounding value of atomic bombs, and the consequential value of any intelligence about uranium, was personal for Bessac, though unlike Mackiernan he had no involvement with American atomic intelligence in China. In the final days of World War I1 Bessac was scheduled for what was billed as a suicidal intelligence mission behind Japanese lines, in southern China, when the atomic explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki abruptly ended the war. T h e value of the bomb for Bessac, as for so many American soldiers in the Pacific, was simple: "It saved my life." I t is estimated that more than 250,000 American lives would have been lost in any invasion of Japan. Atomic bombs saved those lives-in seconds-just as surely as they vaporized hundreds of thousands of Japanese. In 1946 no nation could ignore the fact that the United States was the sole possessor of atomic bombs, a monopoly that made America the world's first superpower. Nothing was of p-eater national concern to America than how long its atomic monopoly would last. President

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Truman, his generals, and his diplomats all assumed that it woultl last longer than it did. This assumption, based on a misleading interpretation of atomic intelligence, and a misguided faith in a particular covert operation, was one of the greatest policy, and intelligence, failures of the postwar period. Promiscs were macic based on the assumption of invincibility; policy was created, particularly in Asia, as if America would forever be the world's sole atomic power. In fact, the period of America's atomic monopoly lasted only from the summer of 1945 to the summer of 1949. It took just these four short years for Russia to steal America's bomb design and find the scarce uranium with which to make o n e 4 e s p i t e a massive American effort to prevent it. From 1945 to 1949 little else in the world was more feared, despised, desired, or more secret than atomic bombs and their key ingredient, uranium. An ounce of that dull gray metal was now worth ten thousand times an ounce of gold-but none was for sale. America had the bomb: that was no longer a secret in 1946. After Hiroshima the greatest atomic secret was that America was fighting to maintain a global monopoly on the supply of uranium. T h e chief aim of that secret battle was to keep uranium out of Russia's hands. With Pearl Harbor as their defining moment, and Hiroshima still ringing in their ears, America's postwar leaders knew that they had to collect military intelligence from all over the world, more effectively and more thoroughly than ever before. Not only was an American monopoly on uranium essential, but it was just as important for America to know, in advance, if any nation were to secretly build an atomic bomb. Such goals demanded that intelligence material from around the world be collected, centralized, digested, and disseminated to all levels of the American government. T h e fear of failure for the U.S. intelligence community was unlike anything ever felt before the Atomic Age. Failure could mean annihilation of all Americans, and that driving fear was described by a simple phrase repeated many times: "An atomic Pearl Harbor." T h e newsreels of Hiroshima made it clear what an intelligence failure, which could allow an atomic Pearl Harbor in the United States, would mean. As World War I1 turned into the Atomic Peace before the Cold War, individual Americans were thrust by an etnerging global intelligence

THOMAS L A I R D

outfit into distant r~f't'nirsin the most remote corners on earth. Americans were headed into places so remote that hardly any American had ever heard of them. In this new era America needed intelligence about the Mongol, Kazak, and Tibetan peoples of Inner Asia. T h i s was n o longer an academic exercise-as remote as they are, these people were no longer unconnected to America. For a time, during the years of the American atomic monopoly, and just as it collapsed, some Americans wondered if the survival of America might not depend upon relations with these people, and intelligence about America's enemies that these people could supply. America's emerging national security interests in Inner Asia were con~plicatedby the Republic of China's insistence that all of these people, and all their land, where n o Chinese lived, belonged to China. During the war the United States had blindly recognized and supported China's extravagant territorial claims, simply because China was America's only Asian ally. As the atomic peace settled over Asia, some Americans in China wondered at the wisdom of that course.

STRATEGIC S E R V I C E S UNIT, HQ PEKING,THE R E P U B L I C O F C H I N A MARCH

66

5, 1946

Fragrant Comes the Night," a Chinese dance melody, played on the tinny gramophone inside the nineteenth-century Mandarin mansion, which served as HQ. T h e music drifted through the formal garden that surrounded the minor palace of an old Manchu bureaucrat not far from the Forbidden City. T h e family w h o owned the house was happy to have the Americans renting it in the hard spring just after World W a r 11. Peking's literary and social elite, and their young daughters, milled about at a dinner party in honor of the Americans w h o had helped China defeat the Japanese invaders and colonialists. T h e eviction

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of millions of Japanese fiom China--some of whom had hcen thcrc for decades before the war-was nearly coniplctc. T h e few Amcrican military men w h o had stayed on in Peking were guest5 a t a ~ x ~ r t y to honor those w h o had helped China free hcrscll from Jap;~nc\c colonialism. Frank Bagnall Hessac, twenty-fLur years ol(l and fluent in (:l~~nc-w, would be a civilian in weeks, but that night he was still in the U.S. Army. At the outbreak of the war, Hessac enlisted. H e was a twenty-yearold private scrambling through his last year at the . -ass--issued by the government. When presenting the road pass in each village, the villagers were compelled to supply horses and porters for the next day's journey. T h e letter was often stretched to include sexual services for the passing visitor as well. Without a kumyi', you could not travel anywhere in Tibet. With one, everything was available. On the road to Lhasa, Bessac was twice offered the privilege of personally executing the soldiers who had shot his companions. T h e soldiers were alive only because Bessac refused the offer. T h e feudal lords wanted to give their visitors anything they wanted, even though the soldiers were obeying orders when they had opened fire.

TIBET, TAIWAN, AND CHINA S P R I N G 1950

That spring Gyalo T h o n d u p , the Dalai Lama's brother, was in India trying to get the Tibetan Regency to wake up to the impending Chinese invasion. Thondup's father-in-law had gone to the same military acaderny as Marshal Chu-deh, now commander in chief of the People's Liberation Army. In the winter of 1949-50, he sent back-channel messages from Marshal Chu-deh to Thondup, who passed them on to Tibet's rulers. T h e Communists said that Tibet's rulers could keep all their estates and all their serfs and that Tibet's traditional status would not be altered. T h e y could have all this if they would just send a delegation to China. T h e Regency sent no reply to these messages. In January 1950 the Communists pve up on this back-channel discussion and announced the impending "Peaceful Liberation of

THOMAS L A I R D

Tibet." Today, T h o n d u p accuses the Tibetan government of throwing away this chance. Others say that it was a simply a Chinese trick and that the P L A would have invaded in any event. In March, the P L A occupied Kangding (Dartsendo) on the traditional ethnic dividing line between China and Tibet. In April, thirty thousand troops of the People's Liberation Army pushed farther westward into the Tibetan province of Kham, where the population had always been more than go percent Tibetan. Since the leaders of Kham had only occasionally accepted direct rule from Lhasa, the Tibetan army was not stationed in Kham. Some of the invading Chinese troops had been specially trained in minority nationalities policy, which Bessac had seen evolving in Inner Mongolia in 1947.When the P L A entered Kham, they treated the Khampas with great respect and paid above-market prices for anything they needed. Some Chinese said they would help the Khampas create their own independent state of Kham. Local Khampa lords received high-sounding titles and large salaries. This velvet invasion exploited Khampa hatred of the central Tibetans. These first Chinese invaders insisted that they had entered Tibet to help the Tibetans. When Tibet was improved and was capable of self-rule, their Chinese brothers would leave. In this first ~ h a s elocal collaboration was essential. China had not yet built the roads it would require to supply its armies: some supplies were being air-dropped. T r u e Chinese intentions were not exposed until the roads linking K h a m with China were completed. By April 1950 T h o n d u p was frustrated with the lack of response from the Tibetan government. H e packed his bags and took his wife and young daughter to H o n g Kong. Nationalist intelligence agents had penetrated his father-in-law's house there. When the Nationalists discovered that T h o n d u p was in contact with the Chinese Cornmunists, they invited him to visit Taiwan. Upon arrival, Chiang Kai-shek's agents retained his passport. T h o n d u p learned that his hotel was in effect a prison. H e had heen kidnapped and would not leave Taiwan for nearly eighteen months. From April 1950 until September ~ ~ ~ ~ - d uthe r i~ en r ~i o dof the Chinese invasion of Tibet-Thondup was cut off from all sources of information. Chiang offered T h o n d u p patient teachers, who

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,xp]ained that the Communists were like a seductive prostitute: beautiful on the outside but diseased inside. (Jn May 2 1 , ~ g g o once , Thondup was in his hands, Chiang Kai-shek's office in Taiwan distributed a press release. It said that the Dalai Lama's brother had arrived to seek military aid from the Americans. Chiang looked forward to receiving more U.S. dollars to use for the liberation of this Chinese province. That May, the U.S. government resumed aid to the Nationalist ~ O V ernment on Taiwan that had been discontinued in August 1948.One of the first beneficiaries of this aid was Taiwan's covert action project. Despite support to Taiwan, there was still no final decision to arm the Tibetans. Gyalo T h o n d u p escaped from Taiwan only after he sent a letter covertly to Secretary of State Dean Acheson in 1951.Acheson replied to Chiang, and T h o n d u p was released. By then Communist Chinese troops were in Lhasa.

L H A S A , TIBET JUNE 1 1 ,

1950

A steady rain fell as twenty eight-year-old Frank Bessac rode alone into the fringe of the Tibetan capital, ahead of the rest of his party. Low clouds at first obscured the distant roofs of the Potala. When they parted and a shaft of sunlight hit the golden roofs Bessac caught his first sight of the most famous building in Tibet, floating like a vision above the emerald-green barley fields. His pony picked its way down a m u d d y lane lined with tall poplars. H e gazed a t Tibet in awe. A group of women threaded their way down to the river, singing, with heaps of flowers in their arms. Perhaps they were headed to offer flowers to some protector deity in the fields. Maybe they were just weeding wildflowers from a field. Bessac never knew. In his mind it all created a general impression of wealth, greenery, and happiness. And the women were pretty, too.

THOMAS

LAIRD

A few miles outside the city, he found an embroidered tent erected in a meadow :dongside the road to welcome him. Several officials from the Tibetan Foreign Bureau were waiting for him. Theyheld his reins as he dismounted, drew him into the tent, made him a gift of new Tibetan robes, and plied him with food and tea. He was introduced to his government-appointed translator, Tse Gung, and aide-de-camp, Driesur N u , w h o was deputed from his official position as Telegraph Master of Tibet. T h e Tibetans were dressed in gorgeous silk robes. T h e wore long dangling earrings from their pierced ears and other adornments, indicating their rank within the highly stratified social structure of Tibet. As government officers, they all wore round yellow government officer hats, fat felted wool saucers perched atop their heads. Bessac found the reception committee endearing. They all kept repeating that the death of Mackiernan was a terrible accident and hoped Bessac could convince the U.S. government that such was the fact behind the tragedy. As Bessac enjoyed the traditional welcome, he noticed in the corner of the tent a man ten years his senior w h o was certainly not Tibetan. H e stood out in the crowd if only because he was the only person in a European-style suit. He was one of the eight Westerners allowed to reside in Tibet. Heinrich Harrer says he went out to the edge of Lhasa "thinking that it might be some comfort to the young American to have a white man to talk to." Harrer began a friendship with Bessac as the two men rode into town, their mounts ambling together down the muddy lane in the rain. Harrer later described his first encounter with Bessac in his book. We met the young man in a pouring rain. He was as tall as a hoppole and completely dwarfed his little Tibetan pony. 1 could well imagine how he felt. The little caravan had been months on the road . . . and . . . their first meeting with the people of the country in which they sought asylum brought three of their party to their deaths. . . . I . . . hoped to convince him that the Government could not be blamed for the incident, which it deeply regretted. Harrer's dapper suit made Bessac aware of what a bearded mountain man he had become during the trek from Tihwa. As they rode

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on into Lhasa, Bessac's eyes kept wandering off over the barley, amazed that it was already knee high at this low elevation oftwelve thousand four hundred feet. T h e fields stretcher1 down t~ the edge of the Kyichu River, which meanders through the vast Lhasa valley. sirteen-thousand-foot mountains rim the valley, but those peaks were hidden in black monsoon clouds. Riding through the endless barley fields on the outskirts of Lhasa, Bessac's eyes were continually drawn back to the Potala. T h e hilltop fortress on a solitary crag stood like a tower in the middle of the flat valley bottom. Lhasa remained obscured by willows until they drew closer. There was no city wall around it, as in Peking or Tihwa. At first sight, Lhasa was a line of low-lying whitewashed buildings peeking above willows that dotted the grazing lands around it. T h e city had a population of thirty thousand people in a one-square-kilometer area, yet it was the largest city in Tibet. Tse G u n g and Harrer explained to Bessac that Lha-sa means, literally, God-place, or place of the gods. As they rode through the willows toward the flat-roofed buildings, Hessac noticed a flock of golden pagoda roofs in the center of the city that hovered above the roofline. N o building in the city was higher. The golden roofs were those of the Jokhang temple. the first Buddhist temple built in the country, established about 640 .A.L). T h e Dalai Lama calls it the "holiest shrine in all Tibet." Tibet's greatest ruler, King Songtsen Gampo, built it with the aid of visiting Nepalese craftsmen. Though periodically sacked by invaders over the centuries the temple remains the finest relic from Tibet's imperial age. During the seventh century, King Songtsen G a m p o unified the many feuding Tibetan fiefdoms into a single nation. H e and his sons led the Tibetans on a century of conquest. T h e Tibetan empire eventually reached to Nepal and India and even occupied Sinkiang. They even pushed to the walls of the T a n g Chinese emperor's capital at Changan. A wing of the Great Wall is said to have been built to hold back the waves of Tibetan nomads who made an annual sport of seeking tribute from the lowland farmers of China-just as had their nomadic brothers the Manchu and the Mongol. T h e Nepalese and Chinese kings, threatened by invasion, each concluded a marriage alliance with Tibet. Both kings sent one of their own daughters to wed King Songtsen Gampo. T h e princessss-both

THOMAS L A I R D

from Buddhist countries-brought images of the Buddha with them as part of their trousseau, thinking to tame the barbarians who threatened their homelands with the philosophy of peace. T h e Jokhang was built under the instruction of the Nepalese princess to house the Buddha statue she had brought, which is why it resembles ancient Indian and Nepalese Buddhist temples, from which the Chinese also took architectural inspiration. Buddhism in Tibet dates from its introduction to Tibetan royalty by the two princesses. As the survivors of the Mackiernan party entered the city through winding alleys, the trail beneath them became muddy with urban traffic. Donkeys laden with clay pots a n d other trade items shared the trail with them. T s e G u n g explained that all the different areas of Tibet had slightly different dialects, types of robes, and jewelry. H e pointed out the mingling of the various Tibetans in the streets of Lhasa. Khampas were obvious because of the hulking size of the men and the red silk tresses with which they braided their hair; Monpas stood out because of their spiky hats of felted wool. T h e noble ladies of Lhasa had their hair u p on three-foot arched frames that supported their extravagant hairdos; nomad women wore their hair in one hundred and eight braids. T h e hair of nobles a n d nomad women was studded with coral, seed pearls, amber, a n d turquoise. T h e country was as big as western Europe, a n d the diversity of Tibet was evident on every street in Lhasa. Roadside vendors sold homemade pea noodles, tea, a n d dumplings from bamboo a n d reed baskets. Snow leopard and tiger skins h u n g alongside Indian and Chinese silk. Mounds of spices a n d tea were arrayed beside ~ i l e of s nails and stacks of matchboxes. Tall towers of aluminum pots from India seemed to be the most popular import. Silver nomad jewelry, carpets from Kashmir and Kashgar, Nepalese handmade paper, and blackand-white photographs of the young Fourteenth Dalai Lama all vied for buyers' attentions in the crowded bazaar. For more than n thousand years, Lhasa had been the city of the temple for a nation of nomads. In winter, the nomads descended from the high pastures to Lhasa and combined a pilgrimage with tradingOver the centuries, farming increased in the river valleys a n d the farmers brought their wares to the bazaars of Lhasa. I n time, the bazaar around the Jokhang became the I;lrpst in the country. Slowly

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an urban elite, which gained its wealth by taxing the isolatctl nr,macl\ and farmers, developed the area around the Jokhang with town houses for visiting lamas, government offices, shops, and rcsidenccs for the ruling aristocrats. A distinctive urban architectural style drveloped in a country that was traditionally without cities. The bulk of the Potala grew out of a solitary rocky spur just bcyond town, soaring four hundred feet above the plain of Lhasa. For centuries, it was the largest single building in Asia. Hessac hat] not reen anything so grand since he had left Peking. I t was entirely different from any Chinese building. T h e Potala represents the cohcrence, originality, and strength of Tibetan culture, comparable in that way to the Egyptian pyramids, or to the T a j Mahal. Thousands of workers constructed the building between 1645 and 1705,during the reign of the Great Fifth Dalai Lama. T h e first four Dalai Lamas were religious leaders and had little political power. During the reign of the Great Fifth, his sect, the Gelukpa school of Buddhism, seized political rule over Tibet with the backing of Mongol devotees. T h e Mongols helped place their teacher on the throne of Tibet in 1642, two years before the Manchu ousted the Ming from the Chinese throne. From that time, the Dalai Lamas became kings of Tibet, as well as heads of the Gelukpa sect of Buddhism. T h e Potala was commissioned by the Great Fifth at this high point of Tibetan civilization. Bessac was stunned when he arrived in Lhasa. T h e crush of the bazaar and the glory of the Potala and the Jokhang were overwhelming. There was nothing Chinese about Lhasa, nor could the Chinese call these people barbarians. T h e Potala alone ensured the Tibetans' claim to cultural equality with China. T h e Tibetans were descended from the ancient Tibetan nomad culture Bessac had seen on the Changthang. T h a t culture had more similarities to the nomadic culture of the Mongols and the Kazak than to that of the Chinese. leaving few traces and fear grand palaces. In ancient times. the Tibetans had drawn on Indian and Chinese civilization, and with their own native genius they fused elements from both, creating a unique culture indelibly their own. Tibet, one-third the size of the United States, had then a population of only three or four million. In 1950 there wvereno airplane\, automobiles, railroads, telephones, wagons, bicycles, factories, hos-

THOMAS LAIRD

pitals, newspapers, magazines, indoor plumbing, running- water, heating, or sewage systems. T h e Buddhist monks of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries interpreted their religion in a way that nllowed them to forbid all of these things. They appealed to the xenophobia and superstitions of the common man. Mining would hurt the gods of the earth. Spectacles were un-Tibetan, and so was football. Heinrich Harrer reports that a hailstorm occurred, destroying crops near Lhasa, immediately after a football game: football, which had just been introduced, was banned overnight. This same thinking banned English schools and Western hospitals. When Harrer was helping to make a map of Lhasa, parts of the city had to be mapped by pacing. Even measuring tapes were banned at the Dalai Lama's Summer Palace. T h e most conservative monks insisted religion was Inore important than these Western toys. Such outside influence might loosen the grip of religion on the people-threatening the rule of the nobles and monks. T h e British had encouraged this isolation of Tibet since 1904, for it left them as the sole Western nation with access to Tibet. "Don't you want any of the conveniences of the modern age?" Lowell Thomas, Jr., asked when he visited Tibet in 1949. "Well, perhaps," replied one official. "We are willing to accept them as we accept alms." This describes well how the Tibetan elite viewed its relations with the world. Tibetan Buddhist teachers were preceptors to the Mongol emperors when they ruled the largest empire the world has ever known, of which China was but a sliver. Tibet was the only country within that empire that had been granted self-rule---even when the Chinese had been crushed by Mongol heels. Was it not a Tibetan teacher who convinced Kublai Khan to quit sacrificing hundreds of Chinese in a lake for a Mongol ritual and converted him to Buddhism? T h e first Manchu emperor received the Fifth Dalai Lama as an equal head of state, and successive Dalai Lamas were Preceptors to the Emperor throughout the Manchu Empire. If the Chinese inroving Tibet sisted that any Mongol conquest was China's-thus had always been part of China-Tibetans said, "But we were even higher than the Emperors-we were their religious teachers," showing that Tibet's religious relations with the Mongol emperors was no modern basis to prove anything about the Tibetan nation.

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AS Bessac

rode through Lhasa he was told that all this ancient history was now a matter of urgent concern. Harrer and the T i b e t a n said that the Chinese Communists' radio broadcasts now repeated daily their threat to "liberate Tibet." After expressing their concerns about the Chinese his hosts broached a few polite questions about Bessac's status. Bessac tried to summarize who he was and how hc wound up in Lhasa. "I'm a lost Fulbright student." H e explained that he had a Fulbright scholarship to study Mongolian and then was pushed west by the civil war. T h e n he met u p with Mackiernan who invited him to travel with him through Tibet to India. After riding through Lhasa, the men from Tibet's Foreign Bureau took them to the house that had been prepared for Bessac and Zvansov. Harrer calls it a "gardenhouse with a cook a n d servant to look after them.'' A mansion called Tride Lingka, it was nestled within a walled compound by the Kyichu River, a half mile out of Lhasa. Lowell Thomas and his son stayed in the same state guest house when they visited Tibet in the fall of 1949. T h e walled house was set amidst grazing meadows, studded with knots of willows that lay between the town and the Potala. T h e windows a n d roof of the villa afforded a sweeping, panoramic view of the river flowing past Lhasa as well as the Potala on its crag. The eleven surviving camels, the boxes of ammunition, the machine gun Bessac carried, the U.S. ARMY-stenciledradio, and the gold were unloaded when they reached the house. Bessac says he never made any effort to hide any of this cargo from Harrer or anyone else. Impressions were being made, and many eyes were watching.

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MR. EATRASH'S LHASA "ASSETS" CALCUTTAA N D L H A S A W I N T E R A N D S P R I N G 1949-1 9 5 0

T h e first encoded cable about the Mackiernan party, from CIA headquarters in Washington, lay on Vice Consul Frederick Latrash's desk for him one morning in May 1949. Latrash had caught the consul, w h o knew Latrash was the C I A agent in Calcutta, India, snooping around his desk often enough that he finally shoved his desk into the farthest corner of the room. It gave him a great view of the reeking streets below and a clearer earful of the cacophony echoing up from the rickshaw pullers and shouting hawkers. T h e cable announced that either Mackiernan or Bessac had been shot dead on the border, and that the survivor was headed to Lhasa. T h a t information was given to the U.S. embassy in Delhi as soon as the Tibetan government heard the news and was quickly passed to the CIA. I n messages that followed, Latrash was given "the address" for Mackiernan and Bessac, since he had a need to know. T h e Outfit told him that Mackiernan was a career C I A agent, working under State Department cover. H e was also told that Bessac was a contract intelligence agent, working under deep Fulbright cover. Bessac has no idea why Latrash says this; he asserts, as discussed previously, that he quit the C I A in 1947. In the weeks that followed the shoot-out, as Bessac made his way to Lhasa, Latrash was ordered to get rendy to g o to Lhasa. H e was to lead a rescue mission. My function would be to g o u p there and get Bessac and Vasili and debrief Bessac." H e was told that Bessac "was. . . undercover and that 1 should bring him down, debrief him, and send him on his way back to the States." Latrash hoped that an overt rescue mission would LL

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P rovide the cover he needed to go to Tibet and pull together the in-

telligence assets he had been creating during the past year. All that winter and spring the State Department's message t o Tibet followed U.S. policy: Tibetans were told that they could not send a Tibetan mission to the United States; they were refused visas to allow them to join the U N ; any overt U.S. mission to Tibet was impossible. T h e United States said that any ofthese moves might prc,jpitate a Chinese invasion. Simultaneously, Latrash covertly prepared to arm the Tibetans, when Washington finally-as he tells us-"got their t h u m b out of their ass." During the winter and spring of 1949-50, the Dalai Lama was studying very hard and was allowed only a few hours a day to play on the roof of the Potala. His favorite pastime was to watch the world beyond the Potala through his telescope. One day, he saw people clearing rocks away from a long strip of land in the Lhasa valley. H e would not know for fifty years that this was the hand of the Outfit at work. Frederick Latrash had an airfield cleared that winter, just in case it was needed. An airfield would make it easier to send weapons into Tibet if the United States decided to arm Tibet. Latrash had accomplished much in Lhasa by spring of 1950. "I knew every day w h o was being tortured down below in the dungeons at the Potala . . . we had excellent coverage and capabilities and were reporting all this back to the Agency. W e had at least fifteen disseminated intelligence reports a month out of Lhasa . . . By 1950 such clandestine information collection was part of the standing mission for a CIL4agent. "I don't need any special authorization from anybody back home to do that. I have funds that allow me to d o that because this is a standard mission. T h a t was clear. They never said, 'Stop it.' They knew we were paying people. Paying agents for information is different from the covert action." Some of the sources for this clandestine information network were in the Tibetan military and government. These same people were appealing for U.S. aid, but the only connection to the United States that they were allowed was a deniable one with Latrash. "There was no task force, there was no interagency coordination on what d o we do about Tibet that the Agency or its representatives were invited to. '7

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T h e r e are those coordinating offices today. T h e y didn't exist back then, and I think Tibet just fell between the cracks." Since there was n o policy decision forthcoming, Latrash decided, on his own, that the United States needed to be ready to supply the Tibetans and went ahead and set u p the means to d o that by building the airfield. At this point, he may have stepped over the line from information collection to covert action. Since this was technically forbidden, Latrash had to build the airfield without agency money. "I'm not going to get into sources and methods, but there's a lot of things that get done because Agency people ask that they be done. . . . T h e r e are a lot of people w h o will d o a lot of things that might be helpful, because they are patriotic. "Sometimes you have to d o things with mirrors, and since we were getting no positive reaction out of Washington, we did it with mirrors. It was not paid for by the Tibetan government." A preferred "mirror" for field agents like Latrash was to get the money from the enemy-Latrash indicates that there were times in his career where the source of money for such mirrors was the local Communist Party. Tibetans were desperate for U.S. aid and so would have gladly built a strip that might be used to ship U.S. weapons to Tibet. Latrash says that Washington did not object to the field either. "There's some times when you have to d o things. W e just did it . . . and then we said, it's done." Latrash also created a link that would have allowed encrypted radio communication between the United States and the Tibetan governments. Latrash was doing his job as he understood it, and the feedback he got from CIA-D.C. was that he should carry on. In fact, he was commended. T h e C I A said that he was producing intelligence of a quality "no one else was ~ r o d u c i n gon Tibet . . . And . . . they were not getting anything comparable to that from anywhere else." Though they did not condemn him for his work, they also did nothing with the resources that Latrash created. While U.S. ~ o l i c yregarding the provision of aid to Tibet was still under debate, a CIA field agent was "doing what was right." His actions may have led people in the military and the government in Lhasa to believe that ultimately the United States would help them. T h e C I A had come a long way

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from its OSS days. N o w it was creating foreign policy, by default, the McCarthy-led terror held Washington in its grip. Recause ofall his work in Tibet, Vice Consul Latrash was when a plausible pretext for him to g o to Lhasa fell into his lap. T h e tragedy at the border gave him a believable cover story. Statc and the CIA wanted Latrash t o g o in a n d rescue Bessac, whether he needed it or not. In Lhasa, he could meet his sources face to face. H e thought that he might he able to ". . . for the first time put policy and the clandestine engine together. W h y d o you think I was selected [to lead the rescue missionl? Because I had the strings on the clandestine side, a n d I was a foreign service officer under consulate cover. I was perfect to d o these things. I had the contacts and would have had the directions as to what they wanted me to say Ito the Tibetan government]."

T H E F O U R T E E N T H DALAI L A M A , "A U S . A G E N T PASSING T H R O U G H LHASA" DHARAMSALA I N,D I A DECEMBER 1 , 1994

For fifty years no one asked Tenzin Gyatso what he and his government thought of the Americans w h o were sent to, or w h o passed through, Lhasa in the summer of 1950. W h e n he is first asked about them, the Dalai L a m a speaks in Tibetan for a while and then his political secretary answers. "His Holiness's view is that if you will ask whether there was an American agent specially stationed, or sent to Lhasa, then there was no such agent. But, if the question is whether an American agent passed through Lhasa . . ." T h e Dalai Lama is not primarily a ~olitician.H e is, as he says, n simple monk. As the secretary carefully dances around the question for him, the Dalai L a m a is unable to restrain his basic nature. H e interjects and cuts to the truth.

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"Yes, it happened. And during his stay in Lhasa he had some consultation with Tibetan officials. . . You see we considered him as. . . something official. Because he had a radio and money. H e reached Lhasa, not under instruction, he simply escaped. H e cannot discuss with the Tibetan government officially. But at the same time, he was somehow, we thought, an American government official-he had a radio. So you see he offered . . . [the] Tibetan side was very much willing at that time to discuss things." T h e Tibetans thought of Bessac as a deniable U.S. secret agent passing through, and they availed themselves of his services. It is possible that, like Prince De, the Tibetans may have misconstrued Bessac's position, and that Bessac, as he says, was not a CIA agent while in Tibet-and truly gave the Tibetans no reason to think he was. Neither Bessac nor the Tibetans had any way to know that Mackiernan's cover was blown before he arrived in Tibet, which destroyed the "deniability" not only of Mackiernan but of anyone traveling with him. T h e appearance, for the Chinese, was that Hessnc was a U.S. intelligence agent, and even Bessac admits this. That appearance alone may have damned Tibet. T h e debate about whether Bessac was, or was not, a U.S. agent did not concern him when he arrived in Lhasa. H e was still thinking about the tragedy on the border, not politics or dates of service with the CIA. H e kept asking himself what those who have watched their friends die always ask, " W h y m e ? W h y them?" Feelings of guilt, remorse, sadness, and inadequacy were Kessac's constant companions. These feelings may have also motivated him to take on Mackiernan's mission. "I was the second American . . . not the person in charge. . . . D o u g should have been left. D o u g shouldn't have died." Yet it was Bessac who survived the trip to Lhasa, not the supersleuth Mackiernan.

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FAIRFAX, CALIFORNIA JUNE

1 1 , 1950

As Bessac fell asleep in Lhasa after his second hot bath in eight months, Pegge Mackiernan sat in the morning light on her back porch, sipping her coffee. Tony Freeman, who had bccn so pleasant to her on the phone back in November, had flown out from the Chinese Affairs Division ofthe State Department in Washington to bring the news to her personally. "The Tibetans, being very antiforeigner anyway, and not realizing Doug was a friendly U.S. official, fired on them." O f course, Tony had not come there to tell her that the State Department, having sent its message to Lhasa too late, might have caused Mackiernan's death. No, what he told her was that they were not roo percent certain Mackiernan was dead, but it was looking bad. Someone had been killed on the border, and it might well have been Mackiernan. Only when the survivor reached Lhasa would they get final confirmation. Then they would notify her once more. Every time the telephone rang her "heart bellowed." At the same time, she was under strict orders to talk with no one about the news she had been given. Freeman offered her a job in Washington in the same breath that they told her she had to keep quiet. I t would be one year before Pegge realized that one of Tony Freeman's jobs was to find out how much Pegge knew about her husband's real work. Fifty years later, the director of the CIA would call her up on a stage in the foyer of a gleaming multimillion-dollar building in Langley, Virginia, to point out Mackiernan's nameless star carved into a marble wall. T h e first star on the CIA'S Honor Wall. That's what they call Mackiernan's star at the CIA today, first star on the wall. But even then no one would be telling Mackiernan's widow how he had died, or why.

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O n June 14, 1949, Tony Freeman called her back to confirm that Mackiernan was dead. H e r first thought was how she and her twin children would survive. As the news of his death sank in, P e g g realized she had to g o to Washington herself to deal with the federal bureaucracy. She didn't know if Mackiernan had a will, who would pay her pension, or what salary was still outstanding. She could not deal with the details from Fairfax. As a single mother she would have to leave the children at the Green Lantern in Massachusetts. Only then could she g o to Washington.

MEETING T H E D A L A I L A M A LHASA,TIBET J U N E 1950

Although Bessac and Zvansov had walked two-thirds of the way across Tibet, they could not leave their house until they met the Dalai Lama. Their hosts from the Foreign Bureau explained that "the Dalai Lama has to bless you if you are going to stay on his territory." Tibetans believe that the Dalai Lama is the fourteenth human body to serve as a vehicle for the spirit of the Bodhisattva Chenrezig. That Rodhisattva was the father-creator of the Tibetan race, and he continues to reincarnate as the Dalai Lama to guide his children. While waiting for their audience, the commander in chief of the Tibetan army and the secretary of Tibet's Foreign Bureau came to speak with Bessac. Bessac gave them brief ngs about the current situation in China, Inner Mongolia, and Sinkiang. His message was " the Chinese Communists could not be trusted." O n e morning, the translator and officials from the Foreign Bureau came to escort them to the Norbu Ling&, the Jewel Park. I t was the third week of June, and the Dalai Lama had already made his a n nual procession from the Potala to his summer home. T h e Dalai Lama hated living in the cold and gloomy Potala. H e says that he

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looked forward to his annual move to Jewel Park-to its open parks, its p n d s and trees-more than any other event of the year. Bessac and the much-recovered Zvansov rode their ponies to the soaring southern face of the Potala, about a half mile out of Lhasa. Then they turned west and rode a mile farther away from the city to a fifty-acre parkland, enclosed within a twenty-foot-high wall. There were no houses between the Potala and Jewel Park. T h e y galloped their mounts past willows, ponds, and meadows, a beautiful ride. At the gate of Jewel P a r k , the bodyguards of the Dalai Lama asked them to dismount. They walked through a brightly painted thirtyfive-foot-high gate, through the whitewashed wall, and then strolled through the outer parkland. Some Tibetans had pitched tents for picnics. Voices, accompanied by the Tibetan guitar, the dranyen, echoed under the trees. It seemed as if they had at last found the garden of peace, the place of refuge in a troubled world. Shangri-la at last. One hundred yards into the park they reached the yellow Inner Wall, which surrounded the Inner Garden. Stepping through a small gate they walked mesmerized past the Dalai Lama's private menagerie, wandering unafraid in the Inner Garden. Peacocks strutted about and a herd of deer grazed peacefully. Finally, they entered the courtyard of a small Buddhist temple built by the Seventh Dalai Lama back when the Norbu Lingka was founded in the seventeenth century. T h e windowless interior was lit only by light from the doorway and butter lamps glowing in front of the Buddhist images. O n the raised platform at the front of the temple stood a pair of fine cloisonnC Chinese elephants that had been given to a previous Dalai Lama by a previous Chinese emperor. T h e temple was overcrowded with such Mongol and donations, made by patrons over the centuries-some some Chinese. Statues, silk hangings, and fine porcelain filled the room. T h e Dalai Lamas of Tibet have been revered as Asia's greatest spiritual teachers since 1578 when the Gelukpa teacher Sonam Gyatso was given the title Dalai Lama (Oceanic Teacher) by the Mongol lord Altan Khan. Patrons sent their teachers these offerings. hoping to gain merit for their own spiritual development. Bessac and Zvansov ~ a s s e dthrough the temple and then upstairs and across a rooftop courtyard choked with potted flowers. A door

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hanging was swept aside for them, and they entered a south-facing room. T h e south wall was composed entirely of small glass panes set in wooden frames. T h e young Dalai Lama, dressed in wine-red robes, was seated on a raised platform in the morning sun, smiling at them as they entered. Monk attendants ushered them directly to him. Bessac and Zvansov took turns bowing and approaching the Dalai Lama for his blessing as they had been coached to do. Zvansov bent at the waist as he approached the boy, who put one hand on his head and said a few words of prayer. When Ressac bowed, the Dalai Lama reached out both hands and rested them on BessacYs head. Tibetans believe the double-handed blessing is one of the highest forms of blessing by the Dalai Lama. Tea was served. T h e Dalai Lama smiled at Bessac and Zvansov, and they smiled back. They had been warned neither to speak to the young boy nor to expect him to address them. T h e regent of Tibet forbade it. During an audience with the Dalai Lama, he blessed you and smiled at you and then you left. Before his exile in 1959, the Dalai Lama received only ten Americans in Tibet. Lowell Thomas and his son were numbers seven and eight in 1949. Bessac and Zvansov were the ninth and tenth Americans to meet him. They also became the last Americans to meet the Dalai Lama in Lhasa. In 1999, looking back on these ritual audiences during which he was not allowed to speak, the Dalai Lama laughs and utters just one word when asked to describe them: "Useless." H e is obliquely criticizing the nobles who ruled Tibet in his name. T h e silent audience reflected the feudal grip on power. By the summer of 1950 that structure was unable to respond effectively to a Chinese invasion that had already begun. T h e regent was more concerned about the power of his own monastery than in the fate of a nation. H e could not take tax revenue from his monastery to fund an expansion of the army. H e was unable to make that choice, though the Chinese invasion had been n threat for at least two years. Riding from the Norbu Lingka to old Lhnsa today, a visitor sees the result of this overweening focus on religion-and the nobles' focus on their own wealth rather than the security of the nation. The road

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is lined with Chinese shops, Chinese restaurants, a Chinese piggcry and butchery, Chinese houses of prostitution, and rows of barracks to house the estimated eighty thousand Chinese troops in the I.hasn valley. Nearly all of the meadows and willow forests are gonc. T h e people's Liberation Army filled in all the uninhabited marshes between the Potala and the Norbu Lingka. T h e I'LA has turned a profit building the modern Chinese city to house the estimated one hundred thousand Chinese civilians living in Lhasa. Meanwhile, the Tibetan population of thirty thousand in 1950 has grown to only about one hundred thousand at present. Old Lhasa remains, a square kilometer where the population is still go percent Tibetan, but the character of the area has been decimated by the destruction of more than half of the original Tibetan buildings between 1985 and 2000. Thirty square kilometers of modern Lhasa surround that ancient core by the Jokhang and go percent of the population in N e w Lhasa is Chinese. By all objective estimates, the city is now well over 50 percent Chinese. T h e Dalai Lama today warns that this colonization, if allowed to continue unchecked, will soon make the Tibetans a minority in all of Tibet.

D I N N E R AT TRIDE LINGKA LHASA, TIBET J U N E 15, 1950

Thick white Tibetan barley beer, called chung, flowed from a silver urn into delicate silver bowls. T h e cook had made a great Chinese dinner, served with chopsticks. An American radio tuned to the BBC played Western classical music. A kerosene lantern hung from the ceiling, hissing. T h e gaily painted Tibetan furniture and fine Tibetan carpets glowed like bright jewels. Dressed in a Tibetan silk robe. Bessac sat at a table full of men and women similarly dressed. T h e commander in chief of the Tibetan army and a senior official from the Tibetan Foreign Bureau updated Bessac on the situation

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with China. Chinese radio broadcasts had frightened the Tibetans, T h e message since January was that China had a "sacred duty to liberate Tibet." If the Tibetans negotiated, they could arrange a peaceful liberation. In May, the broadcasts had switched to Tibetan and were received in Lhasa three nights a week. T h e broadcasts had become filled with the ominous alternative to peaceful liberation. Neither the broadcasts, nor the Communist troops moving in on the eastern border of Tibet, had evoked serious help from India, Great Britain, or the United States. Everyone at dinner was deeply frustrated by the apathy of the world's great nations and terrified of the looming invasion. Bessac shook his head as his frightened hosts told the sad tale. The Tibetans had begun to understand that the big powers might not help Tibet develop its army. If the West would not help, the Tibetans had no choice but to try to negotiate-if only to gain time in which to build up their defenses. In early 1950 the Tibetan government decided to arm and to negotiate. Neither effort went well. An order was given to increase the size of the army from thirteen thousand to one hundred thousand. Though the Indians did increase the shipment of light arms and ammunition to Tibet in March 1950, the Tibetans had not mustered the resources to increase the army. In the previous six months, military expansion had faltered, since Tibet had to pay cash for the weapons. Any serious military effort would have required foreign aid, new taxes, or a slice out of the taxes that now went to the monasteries and nobles. Since the serfs of Tibet were already heavily taxed, the ruling elite was faced with a difficult choice. Since foreign military aid had not appeared, the nobles would have to hand over taxes that were going into their own pockets to the military. Their reluctance caused the effort to expand the army to falter. In February, the Tibetans dispatched a diplomatic mission to talk with the new Chinese Communist government, in Hong Kong, 3 neutral third country. T h e trails from Tibet to China were terrible. Far quicker to ride a horse to India, and then fly to Hong Kong from there, than to travel overland to China, which was how the mission, led by Minister ?'sipon W a n g h u k Deden Shakabpa, tried to travel but it never got any farther than India.

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The British and the Indian governments "were both convinced that no good would be achieved by any attempt on the part of the Tibetans to contact the Beijing Government." Again, Britain forced its decision about Tibet onto the Tibetans. Just as Britain and the United States had refused visas for the Tibetans when they wanted to apply for UN membership, Britain kept the Tibetan mission trapped in India. Various British maneuvers prevented the Shakabpa mission from leaving India. T h e Tibetans were first refused visas while the matter was studied. T h e n they were advised it was better to negotiate with the Chinese in India, not H o n g Kong. Britain went so far as to prevent the Tibetans from boarding a plane in Calcutta for H o n g Kong, though visas had been accidentally issued by ill -informed consular staff. A member of the British Foreign Office described the British position accurately: "We can hardly wash our hands of Tibet, as we seem to have done, a n d then prevent her from taking her own line." By June 1950 the Communists believed that foreign imperialists had purposely thwarted their attempts at peaceful negotiation. T h e gist of China's first Tibetan-language radio broadcasts in May were repeated to Bessac over dinner by the excited Tibetans. T h e broadcasts reveal that the Chinese had closely followed the discussion in the ruling circles in Tibet. We have heard that the Tibetan government is mustering forces to fight us: Chiang Kai-shek did that and failed. What chances have the poor Tibetan troops against us? We have two objectives before us: the liberation of Tibet and of Formosa and we are determined to achieve both at any cost. We have heard that you have deputed your representatives to negotiate with us, but they have not arrived yet. Do not listen to what the capitalists have to tell YOU. There is still time before you-it is not too late to mend matters by sending your representatives quickly. In June the tone of the broadcasts changed yet again. It was as if the Tibetan government had ceased to exist. "Our people of the province of Tibet need not be apprehensil~ebecause we are coming. We are not coming to put you into further

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trouble but to liberate you from the shackles of the Capitalists. you have nothing to lose but your chains and may therefore rest assured that the end of your privation is within sight. Everyone at the table had an idea. Chinese talks ofnegotiation were simply a ploy to get the Tibetans to surrender without fighting. The Chinese would invade anyway, n o matter what. Wasn't it time to fight for Tibet, win or lose? N o one mentioned that some nobles were already shipping gold bullion out of Tibet. O n e recent case, the subject of much gossip, showed the fearlessness and strength of the Chinese. Some traders had come from Kham and went about freely in Lhasa making propaganda in favor of the Communists, apparently unnoticed. They carried letters from the Communists addressed to the Dalai Lama, the regent, and the Kashag, asking the Tibetans to send negotiators. When the traders were finally arrested and their rooms searched, a radio transceiver was discovered. T h e Chinese had spies in Lhasa with radios. Bessac was fascinated to hear the inside story of how the Tibetans were reacting to the Chinese threat. It reminded him of dinners in Dingyuanying with the PLA pounding on the city gates one year before and dinners with Mackiernan in Tihwa in the fall of 1949, when the tide had swept that far. In his mind, Bessac could look back over the last year and see a wave of Chinese, moving ever farther beyond the Great Wall. N o w they were pounding on the gates of Lhasa. If only the Tibetans could gain the time that the Mongols and the Kazak had not had to build u p their defenses. It was the only hope. Every day the Tibetans gained, every day they held off the Chinese, was one more day to train more troops. T h e wife of one of the officials, a beautiful woman, sat quietly during the discussions, unable to speak English. A gold charm box, studded with coral and turquoise, rested heavily on her breasts. Her long black hair lay against her fair skin as she served food to the group with unconscious grace. T w o men who were brothers sat beside Bessac at dinner. First one and then the other talked to him about "my son Mingma." Each, separately, asked Bessac if he could help him get "my" son into an American school. After a few glasses ofr-hung, Bessac realized that both

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men were referring to the same son. They were co-husbands in a polyandrous marriage. They were both married to the same M'1'fe , as was the custom among many Tibetan families: in order to keep the family wealth intact. T w o brothers had several sons, who married one wife, and so the family wealth could be passed down, unbroken, from gneration to generation. Everyone had a polite laugh when Hessac figured this out and obliquely broached the subject. Then the conversation moved on. Would Mr. Bessac please come round to the Tibetan Foreign Bureau for further talks on the next day? As the party ended, one of the men had a few words with him. "I could not help noticing you admiring my wife tonight." Bessac blushed. "Aren't you lonely?" "Well, sure I am." "I think I can help you there." And that was how "Pema" and "Lhamo" came into the lives of Bessac and Zvansov. T h e next evening, two young women showed up to have dinner with them. Heinrich Harrer speaks of this form of Tibetan hospitality. "Sometimes it happened that a pretty young servant girl was offered to one, but the girls don't give themselves without being courted." Bessac recalls that the courtship lasted one or two nights. After that, the lady was his nightly companion as long as he was in Lhasa.

THE TIBETAN FOREIGN BUREAU LHASA,TIBET J U N E 16, 1950

Bessac took what he still calls "the holy walk" around the Potala and Lhasa each morning during the six weeks he was in Tibet. Tibetans call this practice kor-a. Every morning thousands of devotees walked around the sacred palaces and temples of Lhasa; such ritual circu-

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mambulation is an ancient form of popular Buddhism. Every morning Bessac put on his Tibetan robe, shoved an old felt fedora down low on his head, and walked with the pilgrims. Kora was Bessac's only opportunity to slip away from his Tibetan minders. They preferred to be with Bessac whenever he talked with anyone, and he usually needed a translator. They let him know that he should not talk with H u g h Richardson unless they were present, T h e Tibetans were increasingly convinced that the British had let them down. Gyalo Thondup today thinks of the late H u g h Richardson as the British colonial "hand behind the curtain." Westerners regard him as a scholar because of his vast knowledge of Tibet and his several published books. H e spent his last years living just near the golf links at Saint Andrews, Scotland, before his death in December 2000 at the age of ninety-three. Though British, he was the Indian representative in Lhasa in 1950-he had served as the British representative in Lhasa before the Indian colony achieved independence. After 1947 Richardson was retained for some years by the Indian government and remained in the same compound in Lhasa, a practical decision since no Indian had the mastery of the Tibetan language or politics as had Richardson. Bessac wanted to make radio contact with his government, but he could not get Mackiernan's radio to work. H e ~ e e r e dinto the gate of the Indian mission on one of his morning walks. Servants in red livery escorted him to Richardson, who had already seen many messages about Bessac since the U.S. radio messages to the Tibetan government had been sent through him. Their meeting was brief. Bessac wrote out a message, for the U.S. embassy in New Delhi, and Richardson agreed to radio it out in code for him. Richardson asked the same question everyone was thinking. Are you an official representative of the U.S. government?" Bessac replied that he was a lost Fulbright scholar, and then returned to his walk around the city. After completing the five-mile walk around Lhasa, Ressac had a cup of milk tea at his house and then walked into the city. He made his second daily stop at the center of all the kora ~aths-in fact, it is the center of Tibet-the Jokhang temple. H e discovered that the 66

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in the central cathedral chanted every morning at I I A.*I. shortly before they were fed. H e liked to stop in and listen to them. On the way into the Jokhang, he paused to look at the stone in front of it. Carved in stone in 822, it records a solemn treaty between the Tibetan and the Chinese emperors. "Tibet and China shall abide by the frontiers of which they are now in occupation. All to the east is the country of Great China; and all to the west is, without question, the country of Great Tibet." Inside the Jokhang, hundreds of shaven-headed monks in red robes sat in parallel lines in the main chapel. Skylights and flickering butterlamps dimly illuminated them. T h e monks rocked back and forth as they solemnly chanted Buddhist texts; Bessac was mesmerized. In that vast echoing chamber, lined with thousand-year-old paintings and carvings, he could hear the heart of Tibet throbbing, as though nothing had ever changed, and nothing would ever change. Long lines of pilgrims, each with a small pail of butter, stood in line to enter the chapels around the central hall. Bessac joined the line to light a butterlamp before one of the ancient bronze statues. T h e pilgrims added dabs of butter to the ever-burning butterlamps before the statues in each chapel. T h e more chapels visited, the more merit for a better rebirth the pilgrim acquired. Women prostrated themselves to the statues, their children held between their knees bowing with their mothers. T h e central focus of this devotion was the ancient Buddha statue, known as the Jowo, brought from China to Tibet a millennium ago. Though the Nepalese wife's statue had at first been installed in the Jokhang, the statue was eventually replaced by the Chinese bride's statue of the Buddha. T h e Chinese image of the Buddha was almost invisible behind the offerings of silk brocade, golden canopies, and an encrustation of turquoise and coral that smothered it. During the 1960s. the People's Liberation Army desecrated the Jokhang by slaughtering pigs in the most sacred temple in Tibet. Its walls were blood-spattered for at least a year. Many of the statues, including the ancient Buddha from China. were damaged or destroyed. After 1979 the temple was restored and worship was again allowed there, but no Tibetan can ever forget the low point of the Cultural Revolution in Tibet. Bessac was the last American to see the Jokhang before the Chinese invasion.

THOMAS LAIRD

After lighting a butterlamp in the crush of pilgrims, Hessnc sat down against a wall and looked upward to the one hundred and carved tigers atop the soaring pillars. T h e ancient art, bearing a patina of the ages, the prostrating masses, and the chanting monks stille(~ his heart. A child laughed and that high-pitched note echoed in the chamber above the deep bass of the chanting monks. Bessac breathed deeply. T h e n he saw the nomad men, cloaked in their sheepskin robes, such tough characters turned suddenly so devout. Theyunfurled the pigtails wrapped around their heads and bowed low before the ancient Chinese statue of the Buddha. T h a t gesture brought back the first time Bessac had seen nomads take their down. T h e soldiers had done so when they saw the arrow letter on the Changthang. T h e n came the cascade of uncalled, involuntary images-pictures that suddenly were more real than the temple before his eyes. Mackiernan's face in its death grimace. Smoke rising up from the firing guns. An awful flash of the heads in the bag bouncing along on the way to Lhasa. T h e biscuit in Mackiernan's mouth, and then the nomad laughing as he ate it. Bessac could not stop the flood of memories. With each picture an involuntary shudder ran through his body, and he was soon covered in a cold sweat. When at last the temple filled his eyes once more he sighed deeply, got u p off the floor where he had been sitting, and left. Bessac pushed through the thronging pilgrims, down a dark passage, past tiny chapels each with dozens of statues lit by butterlamps twinkling at their feet. T h e n he walked out into a sunny courtyard filled with ~ i l g r i m sand monks, where the all-pervasive smell of Tibetan incense, composed ~rirnarilyof juniper and tiny petals from a miniature rhododendron that grows only above sixteen thousand feet, filled the air. Tibetans say the incense contains one hundred and eight precious herbs. A solid white tower of smoke rose into the sky from one corner of the central courtyard, where a six-foot-high tenser was constantly fed by newly arriving pilgrims. Bessac worked his way through the crowds, out of the brilliant light and into another long dark passageway. T h e halls, chapels, and courtyards were perscent that brought meated with the smell of butter and juniper-;I all of Tibet to him.

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Bessac climbed out of the next courtyard on ;I set of mucl, t i m h r , and stone stairs to the second floor housing the Foreign Hurc:lu. The offices overlooked the Barkor, the main bazaar that circle\ thC Jokhang temple. H e entered a series of small intcrconnccted rooms. ~ a c room h had four pillars to support the flat mud roof. (In cvery pillar hung ancient Tibetan letters-some were red scrolls from arrow letters, like the one sent to him, others were folded handmade paper. Hundreds hung from the pillars, all covered with dust. T h e Joint Foreign Secretaries of the Foreign Bureau appeared at the office around I I A.M. As in every Tibetan office, one was a monk and one was 11 noble- dual administration, representing the two dominant forces in Tibet. What percentage of Tibetans were serfs; what percentage of the land was owned by nobles and monks; what were the conditions of life for the serfs: all of this has been a matter of furious debate since China invaded Tibet. China gleefully excuses its invasion by saying it was only, "liberating the oppressed masses." Some supporters of Tibet have tried to downplay the difficult conditions that many Tibetans lived under. The "truth about feudal Tibet" remains elusive. Despite this modern debate two things are clear. N o problem inside ofTibet justified China's invasion, and Monks and nobles held nearly all political power in Tibet. In this feudal society, many of the farmers of central Tibet were bound to the soil, owned by monks or nobles, similar to the plight of European peasants in the Middle Ages. These serfs were not supposed to leave the estate to which they were bonded without permission of their lord. When the land was sold, the peasants usually went with it. T h e nomads escaped servitude, but even they paid an annual tax in butter to one of the great monasteries. T h e Khanipas in eastern Tibet were not subject to this system. T h e monks, too, were immune to the nobles' demands for "corvke labor." T h e Fourteenth Dalai Lama, according to Heinrich Harrer, was eager to reform this system as soon as he came into his majority. T h e Chinese hoped to exploit the system as Tibet's Achilles' heel. If enough Tibetans resented feudalisni, perhaps they would view the Chinese in\,asion as a ~oliticalliberation. The lay secretary, Surkhnng Lhnwang Topgyal. was sumptuously dressed in silk robes with his long ~igtailstied around a turquoise knot. H e was an elderly gentleman, descended from one of the taro hundred noble families that ruled Tibet. Su1-4har~ means corner 6.

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house" in Tibetan, and his clan had held on to the finest corner houa on the Barkor since the seventeenth century. T h e family had taken the name of their house. T h e Surkhangs were one of Lhasa's most distinguished and powerful aristocratic families. O n e of Surkhang's sons was the chief minister of Tibet; another was a general. Surkhang's brother was commander in chief of the Tibetan army. Surkhang and the cornmander in chief had both met Bessac a t dinner the previous night. T h e much younger, religious, secretary of the Foreign Bureau, Liushar Thupten Tharpa, showed u p after they had been talking awhile. H e was dressed in red woolen robes with his head freshly shaved, like all monks. Surkhang and Liushar administered the section together. These two men had written President T r u m a n and Secretary of State Acheson in January. These men had proposed to send a Tibetan mission to the United States to seek U.S. aid a n d to apply for UN membership. T h e y were rebuffed for their o w n good, as they were told. T h e Foreign Bureau secretaries saw Bessac as "officially unofficial" a n d even the Dalai L a m a says they wanted to talk about the supply of arms in 1950. Bessac sat d o w n with the secretaries in Lhasa, behind closed doors, a n d talked for several days. In 1994, forty-four years after the talks took place, the U.S. government declassified Bessac's report about his meetings with the Tibetan Foreign Bureau, which he wrote in India after he had left Tibet. They asked me for advice concerning the possibility of relationships between the Government of Tibet and the Government of the United States of America. In reply, I first made certain that they understood that I was not an American official, and anything that I said would be of necessity in an unofficial capacity. They replied that they understood this, but that I might be of value both to the A~nerican and Tibetan Governments in the role of an unofficial adviser, and they again requested that I help them. I replied that I would do all that I could to further the relationship between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of Tibet. 'The first issue the Tibetans wanted to discuss was whether Bessac agreed with them about their decision not to allow the planned American rescue mission to come to Lhasa. T h e Tibetans explained

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that earlier the United States had refused to allow them to send ;1 mission to America, because it might precipitate a Chinese invasion. he Tibetans replied in the same way about the proposed U.S. rescue mission. Sending Frederick Latrash, known to sonic of the highest Lhasa officials as an undercover C I A agent, to 1.hasa might 31%) precipitate a Chinese invasion. Bessac agreed, as he wrote in ~ y g o .

I agreed with the Tibetans in their action. Elaborating I said that any ove1.t action done n o w which might aggravate the Chinese Communists would endanger the safety of Tibet.

This was in accord with stated U.S. policy toward Tibet, though Bessac had n o contact with the State Department. T h e CIA or the State Department, or both, wanted to change that policy by sending Frederick Latrash to rescue Bessac. Latrash did not know Bessac had a hand in nixing his trip until 1998. W h e n the two men met in September 1950 o n the Tibetan-Indian border, which was as far as Latrash was allowed to go, Bessac never mentioned to Latrash his discussions with the Tibetans. Latrash was issued orders to travel to Lhasa sometime in May or June, just before Bessac arrived in Lhasa. Latrash says they were the only State Department orders ever issued with Lhasa as their destination. Latrash believes that he could have activated the assets he had established by face-to-face meetings in Lhasa. But that was not to be. After their discussion with Bessac the Tibetans confirmed their decision not to allow a rescue mission. Latrash was ultimately allowed only u p to the Tibetan border-leaving him always wondering what he could have achieved if only he had been able to niake the journey. T h e issue of military aid formed the centerpiece of Bessac's talks in Lhasa. T h e Tibetans and both Bessac and Latrash knew what was required-ven if Washington had not made u p its mind. Bessac did what he thought Mackiernan would have done, and what he thought was best for Tibetans. It is doubtful if any U.S. official could have sounded Inore official than Bessac did when he wrote his report.

I deemed it necessary that first the Governments of Tibet and the United States of America should establish secret radio cornmunications. This could easily be done by use of the already existing Tibetan

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radio in Lhasa. This radio has sufficient strength to make and maintain contact with American Stations in Japan or Iraq. I stated that if this proposal were acceptable to the American Government, cyphcr p;& would be sent to the Government in Tibet. T o my knowledge there is no danger connected with this operation.

"I t h e n a s k e d w h a t s o r t of military a i d t h e T i b e t a n s would need." T h e T i b e t a n s replied t h a t they would h a v e t o s e n d that question u p t h e c h a i n of c o m m a n d t o t h e r e g e n t a n d t o t h e Kashag. Bessac plunged o n .

I also stated that the American Government could hardly be expected to give military assistance to any nation or area in which there is no American representative; and suggested that an American military and economic adviser be covertly assigned to Lhasa in order to report to the American Government upon the situation in Tibet; that this American adviser's actual position be unknown to anyone but the Foreign Bureau; that he reside in Tibet under a different capac-

ity, such as a student, missionary, doctor or newspaper reporter. T h e r e w a s o n e last i t e m o n Bessac's a g e n d a . H e "urged" the Tibetans t o cooperate with the K a z a k f r o m Timurlik-he wanted couriers f r o m there t o be able t o pass safely t h r o u g h Tibet. Mackiernan h a d a r r a n g e d for intelligence reports c o m i n g o u t o f Sinkiang to be passed o n t o T i m u r l i k . By u r g i n g t h e T i b e t a n s t o let t h e Kazak couriers c o m e t h r o u g h T i b e t , Bessac w a s forging a final link for intelligence t o flow f r o m Mackiernan's intelligence n e t w o r k in Sinkiang t h r o u g h T i b e t t o U.S. agents in India. After asking if they had any questions, and receiving the reply they had none, I asked if they approved of this plan. They stated that they did, but that they would have to refer the matter to the Regent, Cabinet, and National Assembly. I said that was tine as far as I was concerned, ant1 that I wished an early reply. T h e United States wanted t o see T i b e t covertly a r m e d , but without the Chinese hearing of it. It :Ippcars that t w o CIA agents, Mnckicrnan

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and Latrash, worked toward that goal before the Chinese invasion. Latrash suspects that the State Department and the CIA in Washington may have been arguing about this policy. Perhaps the Outfit was encouraging activity not authorized by the State Department. Or perhaps liaison between different agencies of the federal government was mismanaged because of confusion and paranoia resulting from McCarthyism. W h a t is certain is that actions that should have been covert-according to U.S. policy-were not.

CARVING C R O S S E S LHASA, T I B E T J U L Y 30, 1950

Vasili Zvansov carved the crosses slowly. T h e Tibetan Buddhist carpenters had made the Christian crosses, three of them, from a sketch Zvansov had provided. After they were made, he took about a week to carve them, according to the old school of Christianity in which he had been raised in Kazakhstan. H e sat carving on the flat mud roof in the sun, as his leg continued to heal. H e had separate rooms in the government villa, and the doctor stayed right with him. T h e penicillin shots continued. T h e doctor changed his bandages a n d cleaned his wound. T h e cook made his meals. T h e woman the government sent came at night. T h e Tibetans were taking good care of him. Life in Lhasa had become a ritual, and the doctor was always there. At first he had been happy ,just to rest, but after meeting the Dalai Lama he slowly began to have more interest in life. Some days when he sat in the sun carving, the only other White Russian in Lhasa came by to chat. Heinrich Harrer calls this man by the name Nedbailoff. H e was a refugee from Stalin's dictatorship in Russia, like Zvansov. but twenty years older. H e had been wandering about Asia since the Marxist revolution in 1917. H e finally landed in the same internment camp from which Harrcr had escaped. In 1947 the British had threatened to

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deport him back to the U.S.S.R.-and certain death. In desperation, he escaped and fled to Tibet. When the British seized him nclr the Tibetan border, he was allowed to remain in Sikkim-an independent Buddhist kingdom-since he was a mechanic. By the summer of 1949, Nedbailoff was assisting an English engineer hired to install the new General Electric generators for the Lhasa hydroelectric project. Zvansov listened to Nedbailoff as he carved. From his accent, he could tell the man came from a noble family, not serfs. They talked about the revolution and the pogroms of Stalin from which Zvansov had fled. Every day for a week they talked. Lenin one day. The camps the next. O n e day as Vasili carved, he had stopped to drink from a glass of water. "I was holding a glass in my hand when he suddenly said, 'You know, I think that the Soviets are going to get us.' "I dropped the glass, I was so shocked, and then I said, 'They are going to kill us, what the hell are you talking about!' "I think he was testing me. H e was doing a professional job, to see whether I was red or white. I thought he was a professional CIA worker. "Wait a minute," Zvansov thought to himself, "this guy knows how to find out who is who. T h a t Russian was a real artist, he really surprised me, looks like he had good schooling." After that, Nedbailoff never came to talk with Zvansov again. Zvansov continued his carving. Yet the incident made him look closely at the few foreigners in Lhasa. H e knew better than to talk about it, but he formed his own opinions. '' I also felt that Harrer was working for someone, the CIA or somebody-but we did not talk about it. For m e then if they were apinst the Communists they were okay with me. W h o was going to stay there in Tibet without working for s o n ~ e o n e ? " Only during the past ten years, State Department documents have been declassified that show Harrer may have been involved with several covert operations for the Americans after he left Tibet. Some nights Ressac and Zvansov had dinner together with their Tibetan girls. They did not have much else in common. Ressac wore Tibetan robes the Foreign Bureau had given to him. Zvansov donned 7,

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a Western suit s e w n for h i m in t h e bazaar by a Harkor tailor hc managed t o buy a pair of boots that fit h i m . T h e t w o m e n w e r e h e a d e d in different directions. Zvansov was thinking of Mackiernan's promise that h e would be given a U.S. visa when they m a d e it o u t t o India. He was a refugee looking toward America as a safe haven in a world a t war. Bessac was a n American who had g o n e as f a r i n t o Asia as you could go, b u t he was headed still deeper into Asia every d a y h e spent in Lhasa. Each day Bessac w e n t off w i t h t h e Tibetans, a n d Zvansov worked on the crosses.

THE FLOGGING LHASA, TIBET J U L Y 1950

Shortly before Bessac left T i b e t , t h e soldiers w h o shot Mackiernan were punished, a s Bessac described for Llfe m a g a z i n e once h e got home. In a n article titled " T h i s W a s t h e Perilous T r e k t o Tragedy," Bessac a n d J a m e s B u r k e wrote, Just before we left Lhasa, I was told that the six border guards had been tried and sentenced in Lhasa's military court. T h e leader was to have his nose and both ears cut off. T h e man who fired the fatal shot was to lose both ears. A third man was to lose one ear, and the others were to get 50 lashes each. T h e men receiving the lesser sentences . . . had argued with the leader against shooting. Since the Tibetan Buddhists d o not believe in capital punishment, mutilation is the stiffest sentence given in Tibet. Rut I felt this punishment was too severe, so I asked if it could be lightened. My request was granted. The new sentences were: zoo lashes for the leader and the lnan who fired the first shot, 50 lashes to the third Inan and 25 each for the others. I was asked if I would like to witness the ~unishments.1 watched and enjoyed the whole proceeding and took . . . pictures.

THOMAS L A I R D

THE POTALA LHASA,T I B E T J U L Y 1950

T h e whitewashed room where the Kashag met was about the size of a basketball court deep within the Potala, A lightwell, coming down through the courtyards within the Potala, lit the vast room from above. Bessac says that Heinrich Harrer guided him up the massive front steps of the Potala, through the battle-gated courtyard, and up the steep steps to the assembly hall. Before they went in, Bessac took a photograph of Harrer on the roof of the Potala, wearing his black European suit and porkpie hat. Bessac says he then went to the meeting, alone, and sat quietly in a corner, watching. There was a long debate, back and forth in Tibetan, which Bessac could not understand. Members of the Kashag sat among the monks and others who composed the audience until it was their turn to speak, and then they rose to stand on the raised platform as they addressed the power elite of Tibet. Tibetan sources believe that Bessac may have been confused. They say he probably attended a meeting of the National Assembly, not the Kashag. Bessac's understanding of this meeting is that the Kashag was debating whether to request covert military aid officially from the United States. Bessac had discussed their situation several times with the Foreign Bureau secretaries and the commander in chief. He felt they knew that such a request, if revealed to China, could cause a Chinese invasion, but that the Tibetans were willing to take that risk. Furthermore, during his discussions in Lhasa, Bessac had developrd the firm opinion that the Chinese would not invade Tibet that winter. It was already July, and they had not invaded, so it seemed impossible to think they would invade the Tibetan Plateau in winter. Bessac had crossed the Changthang in the spring and could not ilnegine a winter invasion. H e and the Tibetans assumed China would

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invade in the spring of 1951,which meant Tibet had to get the weapens it needed from America that winter. Tibetan records of the meeting have been lost, and most Tibetan\ in attendance have since died, which leaves Bessac as the sole witness. The Dalai Lama remembers only that Hessac held some talk\ with government officials, but does not recall further details. f k s s ; ~says that at one point he actually got u p in front of the Kashag and prcsented the reasons why the Tibetans needed to make an official request for covert military aid. If that is true, it recalls his address to the Mongol delegates conference almost exactly one year earlier. It is a remarkable image: twenty-eight-year-old F r a n k Bessac in his Tibetan robes, addressing the ancient nobility of Tibet, deep within the Potala, a six-foot tall, silk-robed American standing less than fifty yards from the massive gold tombs of the previous Dalai Lamas of Tibet. Bessac's address to the Kashag is n o small matter-it is a matter of historic import that before now has remained hidden. N o one has ever before suggested that an American citizen addressed such a government body in Lhasa, not to speak of a n American of his era urging the Tibetans to request U.S. weapons. His address could justify Chinese claims, made after their invasion, that they invaded Tibet to abort "imperialist plots." "I was just trying to d o something for Tibetans as I'd tried to d o with the Mongols and with the Kazak. For their. . . independence. I got them to accept an American there, an official covert military adviser. I presented it to them, and then they officially sent out a document asking for that. I had to justify their signing this. If you want help from the Americans, you have to officially ask for it and receive it. You can d o it covertly, but you have to ask for it. There has to be a document. I will covertly, safely, take the document without the Chinese seeing it.'" Bessac knew there were risks, but felt it was a grim time which justified them. It was impossible to keep the purpose of the meeting secret. Frederick Latrash "assumed" there were Chinese spies in the Kashag. Latrash says that he would not have sought the ~ u b l i capproval Bessac did. "I would've said screw that because all you are going to d o is get enough people knowledgeable about it that ~ o u ' r egoing to provoke the invasion. . . . You want a document from the Dalai Lama, one 66 6

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g u y ? Fine, if that's what you want. But they [Washingtonl never asked." Latrash is convinced that Bessac, without knowledge of what was already in the works, had "screwed u p the United States government . . . because I could have completed certain loops that remain never connected again. . . . My capabilities and resources u p there, I could have discussed things on the spot with them. . . . They were doing so much u p there, in terms of building a machine to get something done, I wouldn't have had to do it remotely. I would have been able to d o it directly." Bessac was not the only American talking with the Tibetans about U.S. aid to Tibet. D u r i n g the s u m m e r of 1950, the United States was in regular contact with the Shakabpa mission that had been stuck in India for the previous six months, trying to reach H o n g Kong or Singapore for talks with the Chinese. Shakabpa had a number of discussions with U.S. embassy and consulate officials about possible aid for Tibet. On June 16-probably a few weeks before the Kashag debated the Bessac proposals-he bluntly asked the U.S. ambassador in India if the United States was going to supply military aid in case of a Chinese invasion. Ambassador Loy Henderson reported to the State Department that I n response t o Shakabpa's direct question

. . . Ithe ambassador]

stated we could not in fairness encourage Tibetans to believe that the U.S. Government would consider it feasible to offer such aid. At the same time, Henderson told Shakabpa that their conversation was unofficial. Henderson explained he would have to pose the question to policy makers in Washington to obtain a final answer on the matter. Shakabpa was reporting his conversations in Delhi to the Kashag, thus we can assume that they had his report by the time they considered Bessac's proposals. T h i s means that Latrash's Chinese spy in the Kashag would have heard about two Tibetan-American contacts regarding the covert supply of weapons. Despite the urgent nature of S h a k a b p ' s request, it would take the

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Americans until August 7, 1950, '0 reply t o his request for military aid. Nine weeks. In that time America's Postwar thinking about Asin had changed: it had changed in twenty-four hours. On June 25, 1950, two weeks after Ressac arrived in Lhasa, North Korea invaded South Korea. First America had lost China; now it looked as if it would lose Korea. Asian nations were falling to (:omrnunism, one after the other, like dominoes. Unfortunately for the Tibetans, the ideals behind the T r u m a n Doctrine-established during the period of America's atomic monopoly--came due at a time when America was finding it demanding to live up to those ideals. In seventeen days, outnumbered American troops retreated seventy miles in front of North Korean troops, one of the longest retreats in U.S. military history. Atomic bombs could not prevent it. I t began to look as though the United States would be thrown off the Asian mainland, making it quite difficult for the Americans to establish further overt commitments in Asia, particularly to a country as remote as Tibet. T h e Korean W a r added urgency to Bessac's talks in Lhasa. There was a feeling that a third world war might break out any day.

L A S T DAYS

IN L H A S A

L A T E J U L Y 1950

At night, Bessac could hear the sound of the Happy River flowing by the villa on the outskirts of Lhasa. H e stood on the flat roof smoking. Under a full moon, the Potala loomed above silvered meadows and enshadowed willows. A tower of white incense rose abo\:e the temple. T h e deep bass sound of the twelve-foot-long copper horns at a ritual in the Jokhang drifted out from the city. In the distance someone laughed, and then a song began. Heinrich Harrer had come and gone. H e had brought the maps of Lhasa. and the maps of routes through the Himalayas on which he and his friend Peter Aufschneiter had spent years working. N o one else had ever

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actually mapped Lhasa with modern techniclues. Now the U.S. gouernment would have them. H a r r e r knew that the Chincsc should never hear of this gift, or they would think he and Aufschncitcr werr spying for the Americans. H a r r e r s a d that he and Aufschneiter wanted to "secure credit with" U.S. government sources for supplying the maps. They were just as eager to be sure that no one outside the U.S. government ever knew who had supplied them. Ressac folded u p the 5 x y-foot map of Lhasa and slipped it into his bags, eventually handing it over to the State Department in N e w Delhi. Today, it is in the National Archives at College Park, Maryland, a historic document in need of better conservation than it has thus far received. T h e Tibetan girls, Pema and Lhamo, had also been by that night for dinner and farewells. T h e r e were n o tears, only laughter and jokes. As Bessac looked out at Lhasa in the night, he knew that he would miss her. There was a campfire on an island in the stream only fifty yards away, and someone was rhythmically thumbing the strings of a Tibetan guitar. It was foot-tapping music, and he could just make out the line of dancers around the fire. A high wailing song drifted in above the sound of the water. T h e moonlight glittered on the rippling water. T h e music sounded like the songs the Mongols sang at night in the desert. Wild wails under a star-studded sky. T h e n there was the letter from the Tibetan government, which the Foreign Bureau had handed over to him. Bessac had gone to the Foreign Office to collect the official response. As he bid farewell to the Tibetan secretaries, he pulled out his machine gun. "Here, you might need this if World W a r Three breaks out." T h e Tibetans' response to receiving the one gun is not recorded. T h e official letter of request was already p c k e d in Ressac's bag along with Harrer's maps. Sitting on the roof in Lhasa, perhaps he wondered about Qali Beg and Doug Mackiernan. In his mind's eye, could he see Mackiernnn receiving the letter in the yurt before they left Timurlik? Mackiernan dead, and the letter fluttering away across the Changthang. Bessac had done his best to c o ~ n ~ l e~t ae c k i e r n a n ' s work.

INTO TIBET

GOVERNMENT ( )F T I B E T F O R E I G N BUREAU UNIIATEL) C O N F I D E N T I A L , N ( ITE What you have told us (luring our last lneetlng here was rcportcci to His Highness the Regent of Tibet through thc Kashag, ; ~ n dthe following statement is the reply from our Ie and take over the city: the city falls." When Latrash was transferred to New Ilelhi that winter, he had the chance to speak with Ambassador Henderson, who had fought so hard in 1949 and 1950 to get the United States to reconsider its policy toward China and Tibet. One afternoon, they were talking about what Latrash had done in Tibet in 1949and 1950, specifically about his sources. Latrash didn't tell him details-CIA agents are never supposed to talk about sources and methods-but he made it clear that he had created assets in Tibet. T h e ambassador was furious that he had not been informed. Latrash expressed his regret: "And here I had the engines and he had all these dreams. I had the reality and he had the dream. Why didn't somebody put us together?" The invasion of Tibet had many consequences. T h e Dalai Lama was ~ropelledto power less than a month afterward. T h e regent resigned, which put a fifteen-year-old boy in power at Tibet's most dangerous hour; there was simply no other alternative. By the time he came to power many around him felt they had been given reason to expect that military aid would be forthcoming from the West. When that aid did not materialize in useful quantities even after China invaded it began to dawn on Tenzin Gyatso exactly what had happened. "We did curse them. I remember that. Regretfully we would say, 'Now we have destroyed ourselves.' Or, 'Now we have Ibeen 1 completely betrayed by these people.'" That winter the Dalai Lama fled to the Indian border, and Tibet made an appeal to the U N in 1951. But nothing came of it; the United States and the U.S.S.R. together voted to prevent the Tibetan issue from being debated in the UN. Tibet was forced to begin ncgotiations with China. It was a bleak winter for the young Dalai Lama. SM made report on Osman's rocks: N A R A RC; 59, 893.6359/8-2947; see the enclosure, Notes on the mineral "Columbyet," by DSM. "The USSR might be willing to make considerable temporary ideological compromise": N A R A RG 59, Xc)j.(,jgc)/5-2747, also on Microfilm LM 64 of 75, Paxton to U.S. embassy Nanking, copied to State Department. Osman's rocks sent to AEC: N A R A Re conkssed to working for U.S. agent FIJ: Jagchicl, 1). 439. "At any rate, they are all Chinese. To the Mongols, they are all the sane": Jagchid, p. 424. Mongolians only 12 percent of lnner Mongoli;~today: Ji~gchid,Introduction. 800,ooo Mongols jailed: Rahe, "Turbulent Fifty Years of lnner Mongolia." See also, "Xanadu Remains Closed, (:ontrovt.rsial," South Chinu morn in^ Post, May 31, 1996. go percent of workers in steel and coal industrirs in lnner Mongolia arc Chinese: Article by Rahe, "Turbulent Fifty Years of lnner Mongolia."

280

"rather than genuine support for the restoration of Tibetan independence.": H H D L , Freedom in Exile, p. 21 I . Mustang-based guerrillas gave United States six months' advance warning on China's first atomic bomb: Nepalese General Aditya Shumsher, author interview. See same reported in Newsweek, April 19, 1999.

282

Government may have duplicated World Weather equipment just before contract with government was canceled: LIDM, author interview, citing his father, Duncan Mackiernan. "Dougie got those in Tibet"; "Dougie said that dog": GM. author lntervlew.

284

"Tibet contains one of the world's richest deposits of uranium": HHIII,, Freedom in Exile, p. 26 I . "Unless rare minerals are found in Tibet, the Army does not regard Tibet as of strategical significance": NARA, RG 59, Entry 1305. Hox I I , NNI) 897209 Records relating to South Asia, 1947-59, Lot file No. 57 1)373 and Lot File N o 57 D 421, Subject Files of the Officer in Charge of India-NepalCeylon-Pakistan-Afghanistan Affairs 1944-1956. Mr. Sprouse. U.S. Policy Toward Tibet. April 4, 1949. Mackiernan family members say U.S. government asked about missing gold after DSM death: Malcolm Mackiernan, author interview. DSM buried gold somewhere in lnner Asia, says "John": P L diary.

286

1996 first printed reference to DSM and FB as C I A employees: Smith, p. 278, in a footnote. Smith notes that he heard this from author, after author's first interview with FB. When Smith's book was published, even that brief footnote provoked a phone call from CIA asking Smith a b u t this comment. "I know what they would be thinking if they were here right now": George Tenet, as quoted by D D M , author interview.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

AUTHOR'S I N T E R V I E W S

Linda Benson, Michigan F r a n k Bessac, Montana Karen Boatman, (:alifornia John Bottorff, California Aynur Caksylyk, Turkey Anonymous C I A Employees C I A Public Relations Staff Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the Fourteenth 1)alai Lama of Tibet, Dharamsala, India G r e g Hirkin, Washington, D.C. Margaret (Lyons Mackiernan) Hlavacek, Oklahoma and California Phillip Ho, Gauhati, India * E r w i n Kontescheny, N e w Jersey * Fredrick Latrash, Florida * Ambassador James Lilly, Washington, D.C. Douglas D . Mackiernan, North Carolina Duncan Mackiernan, Florida Gail Mackiernan, Washington, D.C. Malcolm Mackiernan, Virginia Mary Mackiernan, California Stuart Mackiernan, Massachusetts General Lewis L. Mundell C . W . Tazewell, Virginia Gyalo Thondup, New Delhi, India Ah Tinley, Kathmandu, Nepal William and Leilani Wells, Washington, D.C. Baba Yeshe, K a t h m a n d u , Nepal Charles Ziegler, Massachusetts Vasili Zvansov, Hawaii and California Most interviews were done in person. A few were done over the telephone. There were many follow-ups by e-mail. T h e above sources are cited in the source notes with their names o r their initials, whenever the audio- or videotaped interview transcripts are quoted o r paraphrased to substantiate facts in the narrative. LR-Linda Benson, FBFrank Hessac; KB-Karen Boatman; JB-John Bottorff; AC-Aynur Caksjllyk; Unnamed C I A employees, C I A Public Relations Staff; H H D L - T e n z i n Gyatso, His Holiness the fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet; G H - G r e g Hirkin; PL-Pegge (Lyons Mackiernan) Hlavacek; PH-Phillip Ho; EK-Erwin Kontescheny; FL-Frederick Latrash; JL-James Lilly; DDM-Douglas D. Mackiernan; DM-Duncan Mackiernan; GM-(Gail Mackiernan; JMI-Janice Mackiernnn lanniello; M I M-Malcolm Mackiernan; MM-Mary Mackiernan; SM-Stuart Mackiernan; LLM-General Lewis L. Mundell; C W T - C . W . Tazewcll; G T Gyalo T h o n d u p ; A T - A h Tinley; LW-Leilani Wells; WW-William Wells; BY-Baba Yeshe; CZ-Charles Ziegler; VZ-Vasili Zvansov. Robin Clark, spouse of Mary Mackiernan, is cited in the notes ns RC-he played a major role in document access.

U N P U B L I S H E D SOURCES ARCHIVAL

National Archives. Washington, D.C., and College Park, Maryland-Military Reference Hranch R(; 21 8, Records of the U.S. Joint Chiefs ofstaff, Geographic file, 19485 0 , China, R G 226, R G 341 Air Force Plans, Project Decimal File, 1942-1054, RG 330

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Entry 199 LIeknse Relations with CIA, RC; 330 E N T R Y 341 Civilian Records (;enera] Records of the Ilepartment of State specifically: 7gjb.00, 691.03h, 125.9375 to g37I>c, 393. I I 14, 001 .9od, H I I .42793 Audio Visual RG 226, Item 5 , Inside Tibet, 1943, 16mm motion picture, 39 minutes. O S S trip to Tibet by Tolstoy and Brooks. Also newsreel footage on most personalities in this book: Mao, Chiang, owen Lattimore, Joe M c C a r t h ~Acheson, , and T r u m a n Manuscripts and Archives of Yale University Library-John Hall Paxton Papers Harry S. T r u m a n Library, Independence, Missouri-Papers of Harry S. T r u m a n , President's Personal File, Official File, White House Permanent File, Post Presidential Files Papers of Dean Acheson

.

.

NONARCHIVAL

.

Letters, photographs, and other documents from Frank Bessac Letters, photographs, clipping file, ancl diaries lent from Margaret Lyons Mackiernan Hlavacek Letters, photographs, and newspaper clipping file from Frederick Latrash Letters, photographs, and newspaper clippings from family of Duncan Mackiernan.

PUBLISHED SOURCES OFFICIAL PUBLICATIONS

Foreign Relations of the United States, 1943-1951. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.

The CIA Under Harry Truman. Warner, Michael, editor, C I A History Staff. Washington, D.C., I 994. Thor's Legions: Weather Support to the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army, 1937-1987.

Foreign Service Jou~.nal,September 1985, letter to the editor from Edwin W . Martin. The Roswell Report: Fact V e 1 . s ~Fiction ~ in the N e w Mexico Desert, see summary of this in Synopjis of Balloon Resrurch Findingj by First Lt. James McAndrew, 1995 USAF publication.

The Mongols and Tibet. A Histo).ical Assesment of Relations between the Mongol Empire and Tibet, the Department of Information, Central Tibetan Administration, Dharamsala, India, 1996. BOOKS

Acheson, Dean. Present at the Creation. My Yrurx in the State Department. New York: Norton, 1969. A hmad, Za hiruddin. Sino-Tibetan Relations in the Seventeenth Century. Serie Orientale Rorna, XL. Roma: Instituto Italiano Per I1 Medio Ed Estremo Oriente, 1970. . A History ofTibet by Fifth I);~laiLama of Tibet. Translated by Zahiruddin Ahm;ltl. Rloomington: Indiana University Research Institute for Inner Asian StudKS,1995. Ham ford, James. Thr Puzzle Puluce: ltljide the Nutional Secur,ity Agency, Americ-u'~Most Seciut Intrlligrncr Otganization. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1982. Rarnett, A. Iloak. China's Far Northwe3.t: Four Decudes of Change. Westview Press, San Francisco/Oxford.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bawden, C. R. The Modern History of Mongoliu. Idondon: Kegan Paul International. Heldon, Jack. China Shakes the World. New York: Monthly Kcview Press, 197r~. Renson, Linda. The 111 Hebellin: Thr Moslem Challenge to Chinese Authority in X;?+iung 1944-1949. M. E. Sharpe, 1990. Bernstein, Richard, and Ross H . Munro. The Coming Conflict with ChinLI.NewYOrk: Vintage, I 998. H u m , Robert M. Drawing the Line. The Origin ofthe American Containment Poliry in East Asia. New York: W . W. Norton, 1982. Caldwell, Oliver J. A Secret War: Americans in China, 1944-1945. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1972. Chace, James. Acheson. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998. Chang, Gordon R. The Coming Collapse of China. New York: Random House, 2001. Chen, Jack, Sinkiang Story. New York: Macmillan, 1977. Craig, Mary. Kundun: A Biography of the Fumily of the Llalai Luma. Washington, D.C: Counterpoint, 1997. Conze, Edward, et al. Buddhist Texts Through the Ages. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1964. Dunlop, Richard. Behind Japanese Lines. With the OSS in Burma. New York: Rand McNally, 1 979. Epstein, Israel. Dbet Transformed. Beijing: New World Press, 1983. Fairbank, John King, and Merle Goldrnan. China, A New History. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1992. Fariello, Griffin, Red Scare: Memories of the American Inquisition. New York: Avon Books, 1995. Fleming, Peter. Bayonets to Lhasa. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press. 1984. . News From Tartaly. London: Jonathan Cape, 1936. Ford, Robert. Captured in Tibet. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. Goldstein, Melvyn. A History of Modern Tibet, 1913-1951. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. . The Snow Lion and the Dragon: China, Tibet and the Llalai Lama. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. . Nomads of Westelrt Tibet: The Survival of a Way of L f e . Hong Kong: Cldyssey, 1990. G rose, Peter. Operation Rollbact(, America i Secret War Behind the Iron Curtain. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Grunfeld, T o m . The Making of Modern Tibet. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1996. Gyatso, Tenzin (His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet). Freedom in Exile: Aurobiog~.uph~ of the Dalai Lama of Tibet. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1990. . The Spirit of Tibet: Universrrl Heritage. Selected Speeches and U'riting-i of H H the Dalai Lama XIV. editor A. A. Shiromany. New Ilelhi: Allied Puhlishers Ltd.. '995. (;up, Ted. The Book of Honor: Covert Lives and Cluss$ird Death.i~ltthe CI.4. New York: Doubleday, 2000. Harrer, Heinrich. Lost Lhasa: Heinrich Harrer's Tibet. New Y ork: Harry N . Abrams, Inc., 1992. . Seven Year:avid Silpa, Gyelbu, Pimba, Krishna, Bharat, Janaki, Ken Crawford, and, last but not least, Bosworth Dewey and T h e Gang at the now d e f ~ ~ n c t Ratso Palace. Michael Victor worked for weeks to help me transcribe some of the interview tapes. H e also worked with me. without any prayer of compensation, when I was first trying to understand the story I had uncovered. When I began the last lap toward a finished book, Mike was also there again, editing, prodding, questioning, and supporting my work with unflinching devotion. Mike, you have been a true friend. Thank you. My family was of direct support to me as I worked on this book and I am grateful to: Earl and Bonnie Fenner, Tommy Laird and Lois Wilson-Laird, Terry and Jeff, Timothy Laird, Jason McCrary, Alfred and Vicki Laird, Charles L,aird, Albert Laird, Imogene Laird, Jerry Laird, Leroy Laird, Heather Laird, Michael and Elizabeth Laird, Alledia and Kevin Tubbs, Mary Ann and Steve Collara and Jimmyas well as Lee and Lynn Fowler. T h e following were essential products or services during the research and writing of this book: Switchboard.com, Google.com, Microsoft Encarta World Atlas, MSWord, Dell Computer Corporation, Eva Airlines, Thai Airlines, United Airlines, Avis, Wanderers' Mail, Hardy's Nottage Hill SE Australian Wine, Starbucks, Pete's Coffee, Jitendra, and Beltronix. Jann Fenner, my best friend and wife, bore the weight of this book and without her daily support and patience I could not have completed it. Further, she believed in what I was doing and knew why, even when I forgot. Thank you. I extend my sincere gratitude to all of you for your contributions to my education. If I have offended any of you in my eagerness to discover and write this story, please forgive me. Despite the generosity of so many, I assume full responsibility for my interpretation of the facts as I have been allowed to know them. Thomas Laird-laird

I [email protected]

Acheson, Dean, 128, 134, I 54, 155, '99, 253 and Bessac, 25 I on China, 68,251,252 Chinese response to, 133-35 Lattimore and, 253-54 Lowell Thomas, Sr. and, 144-45 and Sinkiang, 132, 134 and Tibet, 130, 132-33, 143-45, 25 1-52 A F O A T - 1~43-44,47,59,63,64,69 Altai Mountains, 25-27 Andrews Air Force Base, 59,63,71 Armed Forces Special Weapons Project (AFSWP), 43 Arneson, Gordon, 74,75 arrow letter, I 87 Associated Press (AI'), 44,45, 136, 138 atomic bomb. See Russian atomic bomb; uranium

atomic explosion detection equipment, 77.274 tests of, 69-70 Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), 43-74, 75, 84 atomic explosion detection project, 60, 87-88 atomic explosions. See uljo underRussia long-range detection of, 69-72 atomic intelligence, 85, I 27, 266, 271 atomic intelligence operations, xv, I 17 atomic monopoly, U.S., 8-10.24.84 Atomic Peace, 9-10 atomic spies, 83 Aufschneiter, Peter, 233-34

Badger, 0.C., 99-1 oo Batur. See Ostnan Bator Rayanhot. See Dingyuanying

lNDEX

Reijing. See Peking Heldon, Jack, 45 Henson, Linda, 147-48, 152 Reria, Lavrenti Pavlovich, 82, 86-87 Bessac, Frank Ragnall, 98, 124-25, I 70,270. See ulso under Mackiernan; specific topics across the Changthang, I 58-69 capture by Tibetans, 172-77, 185 and China, 42,47-48,51-~2~56, 97-99, '04 and Chinese Communists, 103, 277 and CIA, 52,102-3, 109, I I 2,206, 209, 21% 245, 249-51, 262 resignation in 1947,56-57,98 at C I A headquarters, 41-42 enlisting in Army, I I guilt regarding Chinese invasion of Tibet, 277 Harrer and, 200-201 knowledge of invasion of Tibet, 255 last days in Lhasa, 233-38 Latrash and, 206, 225, 232, 244-45, 248 Lattimore and, 13-15, 17 meeting Dalai Lama, 212-14 military aid, 23 I , 234 and Mongolia, 97-98, 102-3 Osman Bator and, I 12, I 13, I 16 and OSS, I I , I 3 , 4 I-42,249 and Peking, 48,51-52,98 post-traumatic stress flashbacks, 277 Prince De and, 55-66,97,yg from 1960s to present, 278-79 in Shegar-Hunglung, 3-7 and State Department, 249-51. 253, 254, 275 talks in Lhasa, 230-33 "This Was the Perilous Trek to Tragedy," 229

and Tibetan Foreign Bureau, 21926 Tibetans on, 210 in Tihwa, 104-12,246 leaving, I 12-1 5 at Timurlik, 146-51 at UNRRA, 98,99, 101, 102 in Washington, D.C., 41,249-52 Bessac, Frank Bagnall and Peking Zvansov and, I 12,228-29 Bethesda, Maryland, 256-57, 260 Rottorff, John, 12 Buddha statue, 221 Buddhism in Tibet, 202,203 Bulgun, 188 Burhan, Governor, 134 Burke, James, 229 Butterworth, W. Walton, 122, 123, 128, 129, 155, 255 as alleged Communist, 128, 155 Mackiernan and, 71,74,75, 126, 127 and Tibet, 128, 129, 140-41

Calcutta, India, 206, 247-48 Calcutta consulate, 241 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 63, 120, 132, 288. See also under Bessac; Lyons; Outfit abandonment of Mackiernan's family, 271-72, 281-82 subsequent amends made, 285-87 Douglas D. Mackiernan on, 288 fight against Communism in "general area of China," I O I headquarters (Q building), 41-42 history of, 22-25242 Honor W;III, 21 I , 284-87 Latrash and, 102-3, 206-8,225,248, 265

INDEX

Mackiernan and, 44,63,64,79, 154, 179, 200, 2 1 1, 259, 27 1-72 cover as vice consul, 22-23,8930 financial transactions, 60,69, 270-71,284,285 orders, I I 8, I 27 military aid to Tibet, I 18-120, 24648,250,265-66 program of special operations in China, I 19 secrecy, 56,75-76, 89,90,247,266, 276,285,287,288 recognition codes, 42, I 10 secret documents, xiii-xv State Department-CIA relations, '53-569227, 242 and Tibet, 206-8,250,252,266,279 and Timurlik, 147 weapons dropped into Mustang by, ..

...

Xll-XI11

Zvansov and, 79,275-77 Central Intelligence G r o u p (CIG), 22, 23. See also Office of Strategic Services; Strategic Services Unit Changthang Plateau, 4, I 27, 185437,195 across the, 158-69 nomads and grenades on, I 83-85 Chen Kuiyuan, 268-69 Chengdu, 98 Chenrezig, Bodhisattva, 212 Chiang Kai-shek, 95, 132-34, 157-58 collapse, 68, I 52 on Communists, 198-99 corruption, 65,68,74-75, 128, 158, 280-8 I as fascist dictator, 12-13 on Inner Mongolia and Tibet, 16, rqo Lattimore and, 61-62 McCarthy and, 142, 157,254,255 persecution of enemies, 255

in T a ~ w a n 198-y , and United States, 3 I , 05,74-75, I 29, I 57-58, 266, 270, 2Ho-8 I and United States' recognition of Tibet, r 28, 129, 140 United States' view of, 12, I j, 08, 74-75, '40 China . See alio spec~fi-croprts colonialism in, 1 1, 15,251-52 Japanese invasion and, l t r r I , jo, 240 sense of victimization from, 209 diplomatic relations, 130 Inner Asia as belonging to, ro "right" to rule E T R , 39 China lobby, 25 1-52,254-55,280-8 I "China question," 12 China White Paper, roo, 128 Chinese colonialism in Malaysia, 54 in Mongolia, 278 in Tibet, 215, 279. Seealso Chinese invasions, of Tibet denial of, 269 Chinese Communist revolution and civil war, 48,68, I 20 and Tibet, 95 Chinese Comlnunists. See also Mao; People's Liberation Army (PLA) Bessac and, 103,277 betrayal of Tibet, 268 lies regarding Tibet, 140, 268-69 and Mongolia. See Dingyuanying negotiations with Tibet, 129, 19798. 216-18, 236, 237, 250. 264. 267-68 neutralization of countries supporting Tibet, 266 and Sinkiang, I I I , 146-48, 246 and Timurlrk, 146-49. I 51

INDEX

Chinese invasions, 207 of Tibet, 2 I 7-1 8, 230-3 I , 238, 2505 1, 204 Ressac on, 255, 277 consequences, 265 feudalism and, 223 other countries' failure to help Tibet, 131. Seealso United States reasons and excuses for, xiv, 223, 23 1,2403 247, 256 threat of, 205, 217 and Tibet's surrender, 257,26768 United States and, xiv-xv, 96, 129, 2477 2481 250i 256i 277 U.S. actions that hastened, xivxv, I 40,210,226-27,23 I , 247-48, 250-5 I , 266 U.S. fear of precipitating, 96, 132,207,224-25 Chinese migration into Mongolia, 278 into Tibet, 269-70 Chinese Nationalists, 3 I . See also Chiang Kai-shek United States and, roo, 128, 132, 140 Chingel River, 27-28 Christianity, 227 Civil Air Transport (CAT), I r 2, I 16, I 23 Clubb, Edmund O., 34,251 Cold War prelude to, 8-10, 101, I 19, 142 Winter 1950-1951.270-72 colonial rights, reluctance to challenge, 267 colonialism, 61,240. See also China, colonialism in; Chinese coloninlis~n

Comnlunists, 161 34-.35,37,38,4~),8 I . See also Chinese ollglas Seymour, Jr. (cot~tinued ) honors, 253,284-87 Hopson and, 46-47 intelligence operations, 63, I 18 Ivan X and, 77 and the Kazak, 61, I 18, 149, 166, 168, 169 Linda Benson on, 147-48, 152 marriages, I 9,40,45. See also Lyons; Mackiernan, Darrell in the media, 118, 134-40, 153, 187 mental (in)stability, 165-66,258, 259 military aid to Tibet, 169,250-51 Osman and, 33,66-67, I 10-19, 167 Paxton and, 72-75, 178 in Shegar-Hunglung, 4-7 skills and self-confidence, 64 and Tibet, r I 8, 169 in Tibet, 90, 123,210,283 cover blown before arriving, 2 1 0 journey to Tibet, I 53, I 54, 156, 164-65, 167-70,283 in Tihwa, 19, 23,81, 105-19,246 atomic intelligence work, 127 journey to Tihwa, 30-35 and Timurlik, 127,147-51, 153 and uranium, 34-35,37,38,89,283 viewed as spy, 133, 135-39, r 51, 1567 274 weapons and, 32, 165-66, I 72-73 "women problems," I 8- I 9, 40, 149,

258, 259,264 Zvansov and, 76,79-80,

II

I , I 14-

'5,1h4,165, '74 Mackiernan, Duncan, 285 Mackiernan, Gail, 67, 282-83 abandonment by State Department and CIA, 282

Mackiernan, Grammy, 282-83 Mackiernan, Mary, 179, 285 Mackiernan, Mother, 59,05-06, 17778,282-8 j Mackiernan, I'egge. See Lyons, Margaret Mackiernan, Stuart, 58-59,65,06,71, 72,88 on Douglas Mackiernan, jr., 58,61, 66, 67, 1 14, 283 Yates and, 64 Maillard, Elia, 36 Malaysia, 54 Manchu, 14-15, 148,204 Mandarins, 52 Manhattan Engineering District, 24 Manhattan Project, 24 Mao Tse-tung, 9 4 9 5 , 120, 132. See also Chinese Communists on Chinese territory, 16,94-95 Chinese victory, 68, 120 death toll in Tibet, 269 and Sinkiang, I I I , 133 on Tibet, 94-95, I 29 United States and, 12, 13,68,270, 28 I Martin, Edwin, 30 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 19-20 Masterson, T o m , 45 Matthiessen, Peter, xii McCarran, Pat, loo McCarthy, Joseph, 154, 155, 252,254, 2557 267 and Lattimore, 156-57, 254 speech, 142-43 McCarthyism, 65,68, 142-43, 155, 156, 227,252 and Tibet, 142, 143, 252 McNamara, Robert, 255

INDEX

Mei-ling, 1 2 Mei tz, Raymond, 99, I o I Military Assistance Program (MAP), 100, 101, 119, 141 MAP-303, lor, 121, 240 M A P money, I 20, 1 2 1 and Tibet, 101, 120, 121, 141 mines and mining. See ulso uranium Russian, 33-35 Mongol Banners, 55 Mongol troops, 3 I Mongolia, 55 Inner, 16-17,55,278 independence, 97 Mongolian Communist Rulers, 277 Mongolian People's Delegate Conference, 97-103 Mongols, 14-1 7 Prince D e and, 55-56 and Timurlik, 146 and United States, I I 8 Mundell, Lewis, 85 Murray Hill, z j , 4 3 , 4 4 , 8 4 Mustang, Nepal, xii

Nanking, China, 18, 19,21 nationalism, Asian, 255. See also Chinese Nationalists Nechung Monastery, 237 Nechung oracle, 236-37 Nedbailoff, 227-28 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 145 Nepal, xi-xii revolution in I 990, xii New Dehli, India, 250. See also under United States, embassies Zvansov in, 274-75 Norbu Lingka, 2 1 2-14 nuclear gulag, 83,84

of Strntcgic Servicc-s(( JSS), H. I I , I .j, 22, 249, 2H 3. See ulro

( Iffice

Central Intelligcncc Agency; Strategic Services Unit Hessac and, I I , I 3, 4 I -42, 249 ()shinsky, I h v i d M., I 42-4 J Osman Rator, 50,7y, 147 biography of, I 47 birth of son, 31 camp, I I 3-15 at Chingel River, 27-29 imprisonment, torture, and execution, 273-74.276 and Kazak, 167 in Koktogai/Altai Mountains, 20-27 Lyons's meeting with, 38-39 Mackiernan and, .3-j, 66-67, 1 lo-19. 167 minerals, mines, and, 31,34-35.66 and Peitaishan Incident, 3 I Qali Reg and, 150 and the Russians, 76, 79 in Tihwa, I 10-13 vital intelligence provided by, I I j weapons, 33, 35, 1 I 8 Outfit, 5, 42, 75,206. 227, 249, 250. 271, 285. See also Central Intelligence Agency

Pai Chih-jen. See Bessac, Frank Bagnall Pakistan, 107 Panchen Lama, 129 Parker. Pegge. See Lyons, Margaret Paxton, John Hall, 23,32,3q, 35.81. '38-39 on Mackiernan, 72-74 Mackiernan and, 75, I 78 State Department a n d , 24

INDEX

Peitaishan, 31, 33 Peitaishan Incident, 31.37 Peitzeniiao, I 6 Peking, 10-12, 15, 16 Bessac and, 48,5 I -52,913 relationship with nomads, 148-49 and Washington, D.C., 140-42 People's Liberation Army (PLA), 197, I 98, 2 I 5,22 I , 276 Peter of Greece, Prince, 243 plutonium, 82-84 Potala, 201, 203-5, 207, 212-13, 219, 230-33 Plwident Polk (U.S. steamship), 49-50, 53 Prince De, I 19 arrest and imprisonment, 277-78 Bessac and, 55-66, 97,99 and Mongolia, 97,99, I 01-3 request for arms, r I 8

:~tomicindustry, 83 atomic intelligence, U.S. records about, 85 atomic test site, 81-83, 85-90 refusal to discuss Tibet at UN, 265, 267 Russian atomic bomb, 85 first, 25,35,39, 80, 82, 89, 286 materials, design, and manufacture, 9,83,84,89. See also uranium scientists who built bomb, 83-84 Russian spies in U.S., 143 Russians and E T R , 23,27,3 1,36,50,67 and the Kazak, 33-34, 78-79 in Koktogai, 26,27 Mao Tse-tung and, 13 mines and mining, 33-35. See also uranium White, 76, 77, I I I , I 13, r 14, I 17, 161, 165, 167, 178,274. Seealso specific individuals

Q building, 41-42 Qali Beg, 150-52,226,234,235

radios, 80, 192, 220 Richardson, Hugh, 220 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 61 Kubin, Barnbo, r 90-92 Rusk, Dean, I 55, 156 anti-Communist crusade, 121, 141, '55, 255 and covert military aid to Tibet, 121,246-48 on Tibet, 141 Russia, 35. See ulso specljic toptcs atornic (bomb) tests, 38-39, 89 U.S. knowledge of, 85,87-90,274

Semipalatinsk ("Semi"), 77, 81, 85 17-Point Agreement, 268 Shakabpa, Tsipon Wangchuk Deden, 2 1 6,232,250 visit to U.S. consulate, 241-42 Shakabpa mission, 216-17,232 Shanghai, 44-45,47-48,67 Shegar-Hunglung, 3-7, I 71-77, 191, I 96

Shentsa Dzong, Tibet, I 88-93 Sherif, Sultan, 106-67 Shutov, Leonid, 106, 109, I I I , 113, 159, I 60, 171 death, I 74, 177, 192,281 Simmons, Mr., I I 2-14

INDEX

Sinkiang, 23,3 I , 37-41, 147. See also Eastern Turkestan Republic; Guichen; Tibet-Sinkiang border; Tihwa Acheson on, 132-34 battles over and casualties in, 79, I 87-88 Chinese Comtnunists and, r I I , 146-487246 and E T R , 76-77 journalists in, 35 Kazak fleeing, 152 Mao Tse-tung and, I I I , 133 Mongols in, 102 Russian-occupied, 25-27, 74,

I I 7,

'32-34 uranium in, 35,74,75,251 Zvansov in, 78 Sinkiang-Xinjiang Province, 278 Sino-Russian border. See Chingel River Smith, Ben, 13 sonic (atomic) detector devices, 70-71, 877 9O "Soviet Occupied Zone" of Sinkiang. See Eastern Turkestan Republic Soviet Union. See Russia Stalin, Joseph and the atomic bomb, 25,39,82-85 United States and, 24 Stalin and the Bomb (Holloway), 85 State Department, 74-75. See also Acheson abandonment of Mackiernan's family, 281-82 Hessac and, 249-5 I . 253.254, 275 China lobby and, 251-52 clerks, 19, 22 Communists in, 65,68, 128, 143, '56-57, 252

docutnents, xiii-xiv, 228,250 declnssific;~tionof reports, I gq Honor Awards ceremony, 252-3 on losing China, 74-75 Lyons and, 44, I 22-23,24H-q'j, 253, 256, 260, 270-7 I , 2H I Mackiernan and, 1y,22,23,37,02, t q , 87, '23, '79, '94-9(), 2531 275 death of Mackiernan, 238-39, 259, 284 Paxton and, 24 and Peita~shan,3 I and Russian atomic bomb, 85 and Tibet, 95-96, 141, 143, 153-54, I 96,207,24 I , 249-5 I , 266,28 I and Timurlik, 147, 153 State Department-CIA relations, 15356,227,242 Stephens, Barbara, 36 Stephens, T e d , 83 Stetson, H. T., 20 Strategic Air Command (SAC), 59 Strategic Services Unit (SSU), I I , 13, 16. 17. See also Central Intelligence Agency; Office of Strategic Services Surkhangs, 223-24

Taiji. See Hussein Taiji Taiwan, 129, 198-99 Taklamakan Desert, 124-27, 263 Taylor, Thebolt, 260 Tenet, George, 286-87 Tenzin Gyatso. See Dalai Lama Tews, Eugene, 88 Tharpa, Liushar Thupten, 224 Thomas, Lowell, lr., 128, 204. 21.1 Thomas, Lowell, Sr., 128. I 44, 214

INDEX

Tibet, xv, 203. Srr rrl.io Chinese invasions; Lhasa; United States; .iper/fk. ropics as belonging to China, 16,93,94, 130, 140-42, 250,268-69, 278. See also Tibetan independence betrayals of, 93-95, 129, 217, 268 abandonment by U.S., xii, xiii, 265-70, 280,288 Britain and, 93-94, 129, 13 I , 217 under Chinese administration in 1950%268, 279 and 1959 revolt against Chinese occupation, 279 Chinese migration into, 269-70 feudal society, 223 Foreign Office in Lhasa, I 14 government, 94 history, 201-4 military aid to from India, 216 from U.S., xiv-xv, 118, I 19, 121,

169,226-27,235-369246-48, 250,252,256,266,279-80 mineral reserves and riches, 268,284 relations with other countries, 9394, 204 state oracle of, 236-37 in summer of 1949,93-96 U.S. self-interest and, 95, r I 8,279-80 U.S.'s knowledge about, 96 winter 1950-1951, 264-70 Tibet-Sinkiang border, 3-7 Tibetan army, 196 Tibetan culture, 93, 94, 203-4 Tibetan Foreign Bureau, 21 5, 219-26 Tibetan guerillas U.S. abantlonment of, xiii, 280 U.S. arming of, xii, xiii, 121,279,280

Tibetan hospitality, 219 Tibetan independence, 93, 240, 20668. See ulso Tibet, as belonging to China U.S.'s failure to recognize, 95, 129, 131, 142, 252, 266-70. See ulso under Chiang Kai-shek Tibetan Regency, 197 Tibetan-Sinkiang border. See ShegarHunglung Tibetan temples. See ulso Jokhang temple Chinese destruction of, 268 Tihwa, 87, 104-7 See also under Lyons; Mackiernan atomic materials in, 47, 58 Communist takeover, 81 Hegenberger and, 47 leaving, I I 2-15 Lyons in, 39-4 I Zvansov in, 79 Tihwa-Urumchi, 107-12 Timurlik, 127 Kazak and, 146-52.226 winter rgqc)-rg50 at, 145-53 Tolstoy, Ilya, 283-84 T R device, 87 T r u m a n , Harry, 68, 85, 89, 120 on Chiang, 74-75 cutting off aid to Chinese Nationalists, loo Lattimore and, 62,254 on McCarthy, 143 and the Potala, 29,3o Rusk and, 121,246, 247 and Tibet, 128, 236,246, 247 on White Paper, 128 T r u m a n Doctrine, 29, 30, 233 Tse Gung, 200-202

INDEX

Tsering Ilorjee, I 85, I 80, 190 Tydings, Senator, 157

U-2 mine, raid on, 77 United Nations Kelief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), 98.99, 101, 1 0 2 United Nations ( U N ) issue of Tibetan Inembership, 130, 207,217,267 Tibet's appeal for help from, 12930,265,267 United States. See also specrfic topics atomic intelligence and spies, 8, 266 atomic monopoly, 8-10,24, 82-84 embassies in Nanking, China, 18,23 in N e w Dehli, India, I 53, I 8788,238,242,246-47,275 Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), I 18-20 political campaign contributions from Chinese, 280 Tibetan policy, xv, 226-27, 288 changes in, 95 Chiang and, 128, 129 executive summary of, 140-41 and fear of precipitating Chinese invasion, 96,132,207,224-25 refusal to give overt support, 266-67 support for and abandonment of Tibetans, xii, xiii. xv, 26570, 280, 288. See also Tibet, betrayals of U.S. atomic intelligence needs and, 279-80 Tibet's request for help from, 129303 '32,235-36.247 and ur;~nium,84

United State5 Air Forcc, 47.03, 04. See ulio Af:( I A I - I Mackiernan in, 19-21 Unitetl States Army Advisory